[ambient music] [birds chirping] [leaves crunching] [birds chirping continues] - [Hunter] We humans have created a myth that our own deaths are a tragedy beyond comprehension.

[water burbling] Coming to grips with the reality that, one day, I will simply cease to be, that the organic shell housing my soul, spirit, my consciousness, will be reduced to food for something else is inconceivable.

But to the uncivilized world, death is the most ordinary of events.

Beings die everywhere and all the time.

Every other living thing on the planet seems to know their position in this solar-powered recycling, [water burbling] that the individual alive now is but a temporary placeholder for the individual to come.

[birds chirping and twittering] I can't say for certain that the deer knew of his mortality, but there was a recognition that morning.

[fly buzzes] He saw me perched in the oak, watched as I drew ragged breath, and the arrow that would pierce his lungs and heart.

[crow caws] [bowstring twangs] [arrow thuds] The moment of intersection unfolded as though our fates had been intertwined since our births.

And now, I want his skull near me as a connection to the wildness that the deer exists within, that we humans once fully belonged to, but now experience only as outsiders.

[wind rushing] [soft dramatic music] His skull will be a reminder of a relationship that's been consummated by death and digestion through countless generations.

[leaves crunching] The skull's aesthetic from a distance is smooth simplicity, but a closer look reveals nuance with purpose, [water burbling] the various openings for nerves and blood vessels, the tight fit of small rotating bones that attach ear butt to skull, the acorn-stained ridges of teeth.

[water splashing] My eyes focus on the hole where the deer's optic nerve connected his brain to his eye.

[leaves rustle] [soft dramatic music] I try to imagine the sights.

[soft dramatic music continues] I try to imagine our ancestors on the savannas of Eastern Africa who knew this position in life as their own reality, [soft dramatic music continues] [crickets chirping] but I can't.

I've been too long at the top.

The most distinct characteristic of the top and back of the deer's skull are sutures.

I trace the sutures down the gentle slope of his nose with the somber realization that my voice is part of his primeval song, no more and no less than the deer's.

We're both caught up in the music, sustaining the harmony our ancestors began long before us.

The song is inescapable.

[water burbling] [water burbling continues] [soft dramatic music continues] [soft dramatic music fades] [crickets chirping]