He rolled into Newcomb in late September to save us from ourselves.
Solidly built and shrouded by bushy hair, beard and dark sunglasses, Wayne Failing looked like a modern mountain man. He pulled a whitewater raft behind his pickup truck, with supplies for three days on the upper Hudson, and efficiently outfitted and loaded the boat and us, his two passengers.
We would be descending the next rough and remote stretch of the river while reporting on its condition for a newspaper assignment. My colleague was already on crutches after we flipped a canoe in the first small rapids below Lake Henderson. I’d limped down from Mount Marcy’s Lake Tear of the Clouds, the poetically ascribed source of New York’s great 300-mile waterway to Manhattan.
