Carling lets me go to Goldstream after all. It’s a long, bumpy ride on the orange school bus. At the park, a biologist cuts open a dead salmon. She teaches us not to say Yuck! but rather, How interesting! The salmon’s heart is a deep red-purple. Its liver is purple-brown. Its brain is white! The biologist tells us that a salmon’s eye weighs more than its brain does! It makes me wonder if salmon think with their eyes. I sometimes feel that I do. The biologist holds one of the fish’s eyeballs between her thumb and finger, and we take turns looking through it. Everything is upside down! The fish’s brain turns everything right-side up again. The biologist says our brains do the same thing. I go into the woods and lie down along the long trunk of a fallen tree. I stretch my head back so everything is upside down. I just lie there listening, watching the tree branches take root in the blue sky. I close my eyes. The moss and leaves smell good. Then I hear heavy footsteps. I open my eyes.
