Seven months ago, a hiking accident changed my life. Falling 20 feet through the air after missing the edge of a cliff lasted both a fraction of a second and an eternity, and when I hit the ground, I knew that my life would never be the same. I looked at my left foot, and I wasn’t sure it was attached to me.

I was a 26-year-old physics graduate student when I became suddenly, inexplicably, obsessed with birds. I was innocently studying at a park one spring afternoon when the sight of a Northern Flicker somehow kick-started a need to go identify as many species as possible.