This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.

This is The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick.

One of the very first stories that we aired on this program, episode 8 as a matter of fact, was about a man named Dick Conan, a kind of adventurer who in middle age began

taking trips by canoe, long, extraordinary trips. Take one example. Conan traveled the entire

length of the Mississippi River down to the Gulf of Mexico. Then he paddled back upstream on the

Mobile River, making his way to Tennessee. Then he gets a ride

over the peak of the Appalachians and finally paddles the James River through Virginia out to

the Atlantic Ocean. That's just one trip. And by chance, Dick Conan met staff writer Ben McGrath

one fine day on the Hudson River.

Eight years later, Ben's book about Conan called Riverman,

an American Odyssey, comes out this week.

And so we wanted to revisit this story about a very difficult, troubled, but truly remarkable life.

Thank you. but truly remarkable life. So here, we're in the town of Piermont, New York,

which is about 15 miles north of the George Washington Bridge on the west side of the Hudson River.

And I like to go kayaking, usually in the mornings. And the day I met Dick,

which was Labor Day of 2014, I was going to take my two-year-old kayaking. And my neighbor

piqued his head over that wall. And he said, there's somebody in here who I think you might

want to meet. So I started walking over to my neighbor Scott's house, and, you know, before heading inside,

I noticed at this point that there's this dirty red canoe tied up to the base of his ski wall.

It's covered in tarps and some trash bags, maybe, and it's got army duffles.

I mean, it really looked like it had been packed for the apocalypse.

And inside, sitting at the head of a long rectangular table, was Dick Conant.

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