MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Let's take a moment now to head outside into autumn. Yes, it is officially fall, and so NPR's Brian Mann took a break from his usual reporting to canoe down a wild river in New York's Adirondack Mountains in search of amazing fall colors because why not? And he shared this audio postcard with us.
BRIAN MANN, BYLINE: This is the kind of trip you take for deep solitude. The river is hard to reach. I've driven miles of dirt roads to a place in the forest...
(SOUNDBITE OF RUNNING WATER)
MANN: ...Where I slide my little, ultralight canoe to the water.
(SOUNDBITE OF PADDLING THROUGH WATER)
MANN: I've set off on Quebec Brook, this winding little river in one of the wildest corners of the Northeast.
(SOUNDBITE OF PADDLING THROUGH WATER)
MANN: It's a little hard to navigate, which means people don't come here much. Soon, I'm tangled in a maze of winding marsh, scrambling over big beaver dams that block the way.
(SOUNDBITE OF PADDLING THROUGH WATER)
MANN: Pulling the boat over now, kind of perched up on top of this big pile of twigs and branches. I'm paddling in my bare feet today just to make it easier to kind of Huck Finn my way in and out of this canoe. Fortunately, the water is still holding on to some of its summer warmth.
The payoff for all this work is total quiet. I'm alone. There's not another soul, no engines, no cell signal to tempt me toward my phone. And there's color. I weave through hidden little ponds surrounded by golden grass. Bright-red winterberries glow on the shore. And the bog laurel leaves have turned the color of plums.
(SOUNDBITE OF SPLASHING)
MANN: To go deeper into the wild, I make my way up through a chain of rocky rapids.
It's impossible to really paddle the canoe here, so I'm lining the boat, wading the river, towing it along behind me.
As I splash along, I see a single crimson maple leaf pressed against a rock by the current. Soon after, there's a stretch of rapids too rocky to get through, so I'm forced to carry my little canoe on my shoulders. I hike an overgrown portage trail, through a shadowy forest.
I'm walking through deep beds of moss, beds of ferns that have started to turn rust-colored.
(SOUNDBITE OF PADDLING THROUGH WATER)
MANN: After that, the river opens up again. As I paddle on, the sun comes out. There's a warm wind and the sound of cicadas.
(SOUNDBITE OF CICADAS CHIRPING)
MANN: On this fall day, it feels for just a moment like I found a last pool of summer. Brian Mann, NPR News in New York's Adirondack Mountains.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
Copyright © 2021 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.