About this book

Fifteen pithy, humorous, and heartwarming autobiographical pieces describe trips Willem Lange has taken — to the Canadian Arctic, France, Texas, and elsewhere — and also, in a metaphorical sense, the long journey of his own life. As always, embedded unobtrusively within his tales, are profound ruminations on life and death, love, nature, and God.

What others are saying…

Willem Lange has his moments.... He writes particularly about his 'joy in people...a bright thread through the whole fabric of my life.' His grandfather the evangelical Gideon, Harold Watermelon the Outward Bound paraplegic, and 'the man who hung the head on my splitting maul' are among those who have shaped the essayist and his sense of what is true and worthwhile. Lange delights in life, and his essays reflect and expound upon that delight.

— Rebecca Rule, Concord Monitor

From the author…

“I have noticed how much my joy in people has run as a bright thread through the whole fabric of my life, ” he explains. “The stories in this collection are about some of those people who in the last fifty years have brightened or darkened — but always enlarged — my life. They are my constant companions on the luminous little brooks of memory.”

— Willem Lange

TABLE OF CONTENTS

	Looking for God	1
	Cato Passes	12
	Adventures of a YMCA Boy	17
	Objects Infused with Life	25
	Oradour-sur-Glane	30
	I Need You Here! Now!	35
	The Three Bears	40
	Rona and Alice's Christmas	54
	Harold Watermelon	61
	Canada Geese	66
	Hepburn Island	71
	A Damyankee in Texas	79
	Pelican Creek	84
	My Boot's On Fire!	90
	Love and Rain	95

An excerpt From "Looking for God"

For me, one of the charms of outdoor life is the unpredictability of its conditions. A river, for example, may be too high, too low, or just right; the wind ahead or behind or still; the weather wet, dry, cold, or hot. It's in our reactions to these conditions that we discover our essential qualities. Those of us accustomed to being in control, or perhaps needing to be, often become anxious when events fail to accord with our well-laid plans. We always see most clearly into our own souls -- and the souls of others, too -- when adversity has peeled us, like onions, several layers deep.