The Breaths of Birds: What Hunting Taught Me About Life and Death

How a first pheasant helped the Trampled by Turtles frontman make sense of his own mortality

By Dave Simonett – Outdoor Life

In high school biology class I learned that all the matter in the universe is always there. It can neither be created nor destroyed. In other words, all stuff must be remade from other stuff, on and on. Forever. The deer eats the plants and drinks from the stream, and when he dies, he’ll decompose into the earth and make soil from which new and thirsty plants will grow. 

I can see all this happening as I look out my office window, where the dragonflies have swarmed out from wherever they were hiding to resume their sharp-angled pursuit of prey. On the same breeze, a female robin swoops down to snatch a dragonfly, food for her chicks squeaking in the nest under our deck. The mosquito becomes part of the dragonfly, which in turn, becomes part of the robin. This train can have few stops or many, but it always returns to the soil.

In a recent Forbes article, writer Ethan Siegel breaks down this transfer of energy another way by stating: “We have approximately one atom in our body from every breath every human has ever taken.” CLICK HERE TO READ FULL STORY