But of course, things die there every day. During one morning's walk alone, I saw two dead salmons, one floating on water and the other beached ashore, its flesh torn by the hungry birds. I know that the monotonous sound of the cicada I heard on my first day did not belong to the one making same such sound on the day I was leaving--these poor insects live but a week after spending seven years buried underground. Raccoons and possums, all victims of road kill, lay lifeless along the sides of the road everywhere. Even the history of each of the houses there involve deaths of someone or another. But all these deaths are merely a part of regenerative cycle of life itself. Without any philosophical or metaphysical concepts tied to their ends, it is unnecessary to distinguish "death" from "life".
And thus death, as I know it, does not exist in Onekama.
