PRELUDE: THE RIVER MAN

      We are paddling our rock-battered canoe down a particularly stunning section of the river, twisting between steep granite walls and overhanging trees, as we travel toward the hidden city at river’s end. Over the past hours we have heard coyotes howl and watched deer wade, observed a sharp-shinned hawk swoop into the canopy, swallows cut above the water in front of us, kingfishers ratchet past, and toasted with beers to congratulate ourselves after an exhilarating ride through rapids. If I squint I can imagine myself on a great and wild river, the Amazon or Congo or, at least, the Colorado, and can imagine the man steering the canoe behind me as an epic adventurer, Teddy Roosevelt, say, hurtling down the River of Doubt.

      The truth is slightly less glamorous. The truth is this isn’t the Amazon but the Charles—a name that conjures up images less adventurous and wild than fancy and effete, not to mention domesticated and decidedly British—and that the hidden city ahead is known, in the native tongue, as Bawhston. What’s more, the dwellings we will soon pass will not be primitive huts but Super Stop & Shops, and the Homo sapiens we’ll encounter downriver will not be headhunters but Harvard students, and, if I am perfectly honest, the fearless leader in the stern isn’t Teddy R. but a state worker named Dan Driscoll, who I once played some Ultimate Frisbee with, and who we referred to, in those days, as “Danimal.”

      We like to strip down myths, we modern folk, and it’s easy enough to quickly strip our journey of all its mythic qualities: to see it as a pretty modest trip on a pretty modest river with a modest enough guy. But if our adventure has not been a life-or-death journey into a vast, untamed wilderness, the truth is I have been consistently astonished over the last couple of days, not just by the hidden wildness of the river but by Driscoll himself. The man’s own considerable energy, which I had only previously witnessed when he chased down Frisbees like a border collie, is equally apparent when he talks about his efforts to revitalize the river we travel down.

      “It started back around 1990 when I was working as a planner for the state,” he tells me as we paddle. “Someone in the office said ‘Why don’t you take a look at the Charles?’ I think they