A Canoeist Vanished. In ‘Riverman,’ Ben McGrath Sets Out to Find Him.

A second e-book runs beneath the floor of “Riverman” like an undercurrent, and hints on the causes McGrath is so drawn to Conant’s story. In an age when all the pieces is relentlessly on-line and the true world is more and more mediated by screens, Conant and his canoe signify one thing slower and quieter, nearer to nature. “In idle moments,” McGrath writes, “between calls, I’d look out the window on the broad Hudson, the place barges slid forwards and backwards within the distant channel, and I’d begin to think about our village of Piermont much less as a satellite tv for pc of the big financial engine downstream than as a part of a community of a whole bunch of small cities in an inside-out riparian nation: the United Riverbanks of Conant.”

McGrath likes that Conant appears tired of publicity. He’s socially gregarious, an inveterate collector of individuals and experiences, however he stays detached to cultivating his personal legend. Which isn’t to say he doesn’t hold copious notes. McGrath’s investigation is aided by Conant’s spectacular self-documentation: photographs, journals, emails and letters, a lot of it stashed in storage lockers in Montana and Utah. All of this offers McGrath a certain path to observe, and his efforts to retrace Conant’s steps quantity to a type of immersive journalism, the place to grasp his topic he inhabits his world and worldview.

That world isn’t all the time a contented one. For all of his logistical and bodily talents, Conant can be homeless and psychologically haunted, apprehensive sufficient about the opportunity of diabetes and gout that he plots his river itineraries to ensure he can discover a V.A. hospital when he wants one. An excellent scholar who was president of his highschool’s junior class and voted the “image excellent” graduating senior in his yearbook, he now lives primarily on pickled scorching canine. He hasn’t seen anybody in his massive household for years. He craves human contact however avoids forming shut connections, ever alert to “the faintest trace of a wince or a half-second’s hesitation” which may sign he has worn out his welcome. He tells pals he nonetheless goals of settling down and talks fervidly a few sweetheart out West, however McGrath’s efforts to trace her down lead nowhere; it seems possible she’s extra fantasy than flesh. Adrift in life, Conant appears to have set himself adrift on rivers partly to flee a society the place he was seen “as a misfit slightly than a rugged charmer.”

‘Properly, I’ve to die of one thing. Frankly, I wouldn’t thoughts croaking out on a visit like this.’

But life as an affable river vagabond fits him. Repeatedly in his reporting McGrath finds individuals who bear in mind Conant fondly after their temporary encounters, who went out of their manner to assist him and who describe the highly effective impact he had on their imaginations. McGrath units all of this down in prose that’s poised and chic, virtually circumspect. When his persona does poke irrepressibly by, the impact is sudden and pleasant, as with the wry parenthetical that closes this passage about Conant and the fashionable world: “Had he been born later, it occurred to me, he’d possible have been running a blog, or posting his paintings on Instagram, together with photos of cantilever bridges and morning mist (#riverlife).”

Principally, although, and to his credit score, McGrath has the great sense to remain within the shadows, to make sure that the primary persona on the web page belongs to Conant. And what a persona it’s. In his quoted journal passages, Conant has a powerful and distinctive voice, properly suited to his persona as a unusual folks hero: “There’s a high-quality line between a person of outstanding braveness and a damned idiot,” he writes on one event. On one other: “Properly, I’ve to die of one thing. Frankly, I wouldn’t thoughts croaking out on a visit like this.”