We also have misunderstood ourselves, for the biggest separation we have imposed on the world is between ourselves and nature. —Paul Rezendes, Tracking and the Art of Seeing The question now wasn’t whether my eating inflicted harm, but what kind of harm. The inevitable in-the-moment price exacted by every living, breathing, eating animal on the planet? Or the gratuitous suffering and long-term destruction at which we humans have proven ourselves uniquely adept? Perhaps it simply came down to respect and restraint, to how we treated soil, water, plants, and animals, to whether the tilling was prudent and the killing clean. Looking out our living-room window, I occasionally caught sight of a ruffed grouse feeding high among the branches of a nearby aspen. The bird—perhaps eighteen inches long from stout beak to barred gray-and-black tail—would pluck the tree’s buds one by one. The tree, I imagined, did not particularly appreciate this depredation. The late wildlife ecologist and grouse expert Gordon Gullion speculated that aspens may defend themselves against birds and insects alike by producing chemical compounds that make their buds less palatable and nutritious.
