| Willem
Lange has worked as a Adirondack guide, a preacher, a bartender, a construction
laborer, a cab driver, a bob-sled run announcer, a bookkeeper, a ranch hand, a high-school
English teacher, a carpenter, a contractor and from 1968 to ’72 he directed Dartmouth
College’s Outward Bound Center. In 1973 Will founded the Geriatric Adventure Society,
a group of outdoor enthusiasts whose members have skied in the Himalayas,
bushwhacked on skis through most of northern New Hampshire, and paddled rivers north of
the Arctic Circle. |
| For 25
years he has been writing a weekly newspaper column, A Yankee Notebook, which appears in newspapers all
over New England. He is a regular commentator on Vermont
Public Television and Vermont Public Radio
and his traditional reading of Charles Dickens’ A
Christmas Carol (in its 29th year) has become so popular that it is
broadcast worldwide on Armed Forces Radio. |
| We first met Willem at a small boat
show in Eastern Vermont. He was looking at one of our boats when we said, "You
familiar with these boats?" |
| He nodded and it has
been a kind of romance ever since. Willem wrote a newspaper column on our boats,
A
Stradivarius Of A Boat
Built By North Country Carpenters, which became a radio
commentary on Vermont Public Radio.
Next he was rowing his boat on Vermont Public Television,
rocking from side to side, lifting a trout from his net and letting it slide
back into the water, all the while telling the story of the boats which so
captured his heart. He wrote the article in Northern Woodlands Magazine and
put his boat on the cover of a collection of his stories, OK,
Let's Try it Again. |
| One of the
best parts of being involved with these boats is the people we meet, whom we later get to call
friends. |
 |