'Riverman' chronicles the life of Dick Conant, genial nomad of America's rivers
Here & Now‘s Robin Young speaks with New Yorker writer Ben McGrath about his new book “Riverman: An American Odyssey.”
The book explores the life of Dick Conant, who continually canoed rivers across America before mysteriously disappearing in 2014.
Book excerpt: ‘Riverman’
By Ben McGrath
Stone-Age Mentality
The most wonderful day in the very full, topsy-turvy life of Richard Perry Conant occurred in his forty-ninth year, in the summer of 1999. An auspicious start: he awoke without feeling ill. He was camped in a grove on the east bank of the Yellowstone River, whose water he had drunk, untreated, in great quantities the night before. Was it Monday? He wasn’t quite sure. Happily, he was losing track of time. A little more than a week had passed since he’d quit his job, as a janitor at the VA hospital in Boise, declaring himself fed up with the Clinton impeachment indulgence and maybe modernity itself. Before leaving, he’d stashed some frozen fish in the attic of the house he’d been renting, a stink bomb on delayed fuse. Then he’d driven to Yellowstone National Park, where he spied elk, goats, buffalo, and—on
