Note: This story took more than five years to write. It recounts a two-day river trip that Joshua Frank and I made down the last free-flowing stretch of the mighty Columbia River through the irradiated Hanford Nuclear Reservation, a landscape that has been called “the most dangerous place in the world.” The excursion, in a flimsy inflatable kayak, was a bizarre kind of bachelor’s party for Josh, who was getting married to his future wife, the environmental photographer Chelsea Mosher, only a few weeks later. I took extensive notes on our trip in the nuclear zone, but never finished the essay because a few weeks later I learned that Alexander Cockburn was ill and our whole...
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