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Where Does the Wild Goose Go?

Where Does the Wild Goose Go?

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.

Where Does the Wild Goose Go?