In the summer, Chinook salmon came in from the ocean and swam up the rivers to spawn. This had had the unintended but, to his parents, desirable side effect of lengthening Deep’s school year. His family operated gas stations. They’d started in the 1960s with a single one near Chilliwack, but now had thumbtacks spattered across the map of British Columbia, conjoined by a web of kinship and financial ties. Deep cross-correlated the thumbtacks with topo maps showing the courses of rivers and cajoled his father into taking him on summer expeditions. Father would drop him off by the side of some river with a net, a fishing pole, and lunch, and then go hang out in the back room of a gas station with a cousin or a brother while Deep rambled up and down the riverbank figuring out where the salmon were, and attempting to catch them. By that point in their life cycle, they did not make for very good eating. But as he got older, and these trips lengthened from day hikes to overnight camps, he ate them anyway, cooking them over smoky fires that he taught himself how to kindle in wet wood.