♪♪ In partnership with the friends of the UNH Library.

This is the New Hampshire Authors series from the Dimond Library at the University of New Hampshire.

Willem Lange lived for many years in Etna, New Hampshire.

He has since pulled up roots and moved to exotic Montpelier, Vermont.

I may have to demand an explanation later.

He is the beloved host of Windows to the Wild on New Hampshire Public Television.

He's worked many jobs as a ranch hand, a teacher and Adirondack guide, a preacher, a building contractor, cab driver, bartender.

And for several years, he directed the Dartmouth Outward Bound Center.

Since 1981, he's written a weekly column, A Yankee Notebook, for several New Hampshire newspapers.

He's also a commentator on Vermont Public Radio.

In 1973, he founded the Geriatric Adventure Society, and he's written a slew of highly entertaining and insightful books for adults and children.

Prepare to be surprised.

Welcome, Willem Lange.

[Applause] May I have a copy of that for my wife?

Yes you can have this one.

I'll save it for you.

Put it on the refrigerator.

Put it on- I'm a little self-conscious cause Willem said, where's your accent from?

And I said, this is just me trying to pronounce my Rs, [laughter] Not doing a very good job of it, but- I'm doing my best.

So I want to start with the Geriatric Adventure Society.

Yeah, I'm intrigued.

What is that all about?

Oh, we were only in our thirties when we started that, a group of us were up in northern New Hampshire.

We were all in all in our thirties, and we had just sent home a bunch of high school kids who had gone through the woods for a couple of weeks, including a final expedition for four days.

And I said, I wonder how long it would take us to do that, well that four day trip.

So we started out one morning and we finished it just after lunch.

I thought, well, there may be something left in the old guys yet, you know, So they obviously weren't as quick as we were.

So we thought, Let's do this every year just for fun.

And we gave it a name that we could grow into.

You know, because if you gave it a name like Boy Scouts when you're in your seventies, it sounds kind of silly.

So, well, that's how it started and- It's taken you on many adventures.

Oh, yeah we have.

Skiing, hiking?

Yeah, the big ones have been canoeing in the Arctic every other summer for two or three weeks.

We go to a river that's got fish that never seen people before.

We just paddle that and camp out.

You know, it's an and fish is wonderful.

In the wintertime, we take ski trips through the bushes, bushwhacking, which is fun.

That's fun.

It's less fun than it used to be.

Why is that?

Well, we don't get through the woods quite as well as we used to you know?

People fall down they can't get back up without help.

[Laughter] And it's tough when you're 20 miles out.

Uh, no, not if you have help.

Put you back on your feet and off you go, Well, we know you've traveled the world and much of your writing, though, is close to home.

What you see outside your window.

And sometimes it's at home with mother.

Yes.

One of your, well, you're what?

I was- one of your characters.

She's not a character, she's- She's a character.

[Laughter] She's your wife.

She is.

And in one of your newer books is Intermittent Bliss: Reflections on a Love Affair.

And you write about your life with the love of your life.

She makes you laugh.

Sometimes, yup.

You make us laugh.

And we thought we'd start, with a little bit from that book.

And I don't think we've decided quite what.

But I marked three of them.

And then, there’s- Look at that you've marked them.

I wrote right on the little pinks.

That's right, I'm a professional.

There's the Honeymoon Mother's Day in Court a Nude Descending a Ceiling That I named after a painting.

It's named after a painting.

Let's see- Cultural.

Let's see the Honeymoon It's not too long.

No.

Okay.

Our honeymoon, such as it was, lasted about 12 hours.

We pulled into my parents driveway in Syracuse about dawn on Sunday morning.

My father splashed his face, put on a fresh collar, and headed off to Rome for a couple of services.

He was a traveling missionary that he'd married us and Virginia.

We drove all night to get home.

My mother told us we could sleep in the master bedroom.

Then she put on her coat and disappeared.

That was the start of the honeymoon.

The two of us were pretty tired, but not exhausted.

Still, the novelty of our wedding rings and unexpected situation, not to mention that of illicit love, proved somewhat distracting.

It was also, frankly, weird to be lying in my parents bed, and in their bedroom.

The seed of rectitude, as it were.

What a marvelous thing it was to be young and able to subsist a little more than hope.

Sometime during the morning, Dick got up, stole quietly out of the house and caught a cross town bus back to his place.

Suddenly there was a loud, confident knocking at the front door downstairs.

I pulled on a pair of jeans and went to answer it.

A robust elderly lady stood on the porch, poised to knock again.

She wore a cloth coat and carried a shopping bag.

I opened the storm door.

She walked in without being asked.

Are you Reverend Lange?

She asked.

No, he's away till tomorrow.

But I am here from Trinity Church, every member of canvass.

Have you had a chance to pledge yet this year?

Well, no, actually, I don't go there but- Let me give you a pledge form then.

This woman was not to be deflected by even a fairly obvious signals.

Excuse me.

I said let me go up and put on a shirt.

I bounded upstairs, made a few weird faces at my bride to tell her there was a nut in the hall and, and grabbed the t shirt.

Suddenly I heard firm footsteps coming up the stairs.

I dashed to the top and stopped her at the second landing.

While I held her there at bay, she and I had carried on a surreal conversation.

Finally, I showed her firmly back to the front door and out onto the porch.

I waved my pledge card gratefully at her as she turned to leave and stomped off to her car.

My mother came home that evening and that was the end of the honeymoon.

Next morning I went back to work on the construction site that evening, after a day of scrubbing concrete forms.

I came home to supper for the first of what would be the thousands of times, all very ordinary and prosaic.

But if I had had my wits about me in those days, I'd have realized that with a bizarre start like that, our life together was going to be a wild ride.

I'd have been right to.

[Laughter] [Applause] My wife told me as I left the house that I needed to read the last couple paragraphs of the ovwa?

You know, at the end of the book?

Because it kind of wraps it up, I won't read the whole thing.

In all your life, there's no one with whom you'll argue more fiercely than with your spouse.

And probably no one who will so frustrate you because no one can win.

When it's over there, you are living in the same house and sleeping in the same bed.

Except perhaps for a few nights.

And the substance of the disagreement remains, even though settled still an issue this describes and demands an implicit compromise, which is what most of a successful marriage is.

Gradually, you come to realize that before it's over, one of you is probably going to need the other to answer basic physical needs, just as your children needed you when they were tiny and helpless.

I have a feeling that's when you truly understand the meaning of marriage.

And just in time too.

Canada geese mate for life, I shall never as long as I live.

Forget coming on a pair of them beside a little river in the Canadian Arctic.

They'd been left behind by their self migrating flock.

The goose lay up on the bank dying.

An Arctic fox sat on his haunches about 50 yards away, watching with impatient interest.

The old gander tried again and again to lift his mates head with his bill, but she couldn't rise.

Suddenly he stopped, raised his head toward the sky and cried out over and over the full awful load of his breaking heart.

It was terrible to hear.

And yet how lucky they had been until that moment of parting by death.

To have shared such a life and such a love.

Wow.

[Applause] Ah, those geese still get me.

Well, a couple of things about what you just read.

One is I just.

I love that image of the woman coming in and being so persistent.

And then you said you went upstairs to put on a shirt and we got a whole different vision.

[Laughter] That's wonderful.

It's like when you reveal and what you reveal.

I said, put on a pair of pants.

That's it.

[Laughter] But it was somehow so vivid, at that moment.

[Laughter] And at the be- In the intro to this book, you talk- You have a wonderful thing that you say.

It says people will say to you, it takes a lot of hard work.

Marriage isn't all fun and games.

It takes a lot of hard work.

And you say, Yeah, that's about.

That's like warning somebody about to swim the English Channel.

You know, you might get a little damp.

[Laughter] Yeah.

Or someone who hasn't done much art work.

Yeah.

Yeah, it is, I guess.

But the alternative is worse.

So you do it.

The alternative is worse?

So far.

You mentioned your parents, and I read that your parents were both deaf.

Yes, they were.

And so was sign language your first language?

Yeah.

Actually, it's every child's first language.

Sign language has more to do than just symbols of your hands.

It's facial expressions.

And a kid goes, you know he's, he's not happy.

And when he smiles, he's happy or he has a gas pain you know?

But that's, that's sign language and kids learn it right from the beginning of their lives.

But I had to talk to them and, you know, with my hands.

And so quite early about four, age of four, I could read and write and they sent me off to the library, which is only three blocks away.

Have you thought about whether that, has influenced you as a writer or sort of pushed you toward being a writer?

I think so.

Because I was writing poetry when I was four, five years old.

I still have it.

My grandfather was a pharmacist.

So, I made, I wrote these things on prescription slips that he had a bunch of in his, in his pharmacy.

And there they are.

Dr. Hacker, and then on the back is the robins are here in the spring, tralala A lot of tralalas on this because they're easy to rhyme and easy to spell as well.

And your father was a preacher.

He was an Episcopal priest of the deaf, so he'd travel all around the state.

He had 20 different churches, and he’d had each one at least once a month.

That was quite a schedule, and he preached in sign language.

So you naturally were a very well behaved young man.

No, no, no.

That's how I ended up in New England.

I was not well behaved.

Tell us about that.

Well, the juvenile justice system of Onondaga County decided that I was going away to school I could either go to one of their schools, which wasn't a very nice idea.

They they had gates and bars or my parents, if they wanted, could send me away.

They they would settle for that.

So they sent me away.

My mother went to work to make the extra money for the tuition was extra $350 a year.

She was able to make.

That's a lot.

And I never thanked her, but I got a chance.

I love your writing, and Will reminded me.

Willem reminded me that I once wrote a review about one of your books years ago, and I led with the line.

I go to bed with Willem Lange every night.

[Laughter] What did I mean by that?

You meant you took the book to bed.

I took the book to bed.

I'd forgotten that.

But Will remembered.

How could I forget?

It was a memorable line.

I got to meet this woman.

I must have been in a mood when I wrote that.

When I wrote that.

But I mean, your voice is so strong on the page.

And then when you speak, you're such a storyteller.

You know, you just.

You stretch the words.

It's so you're, you know.

Do you prefer the page to the told story or how does that work for you?

How do they work together?

Oh, Storyteller.

Yeah?

I mean, you do both.

It's, you know, it's, you know, each is its own thing.

Each of em is fun in a different way.

I love to write because you can say things in writing that you wouldn't in speaking.

You can use language.

Right.

Like Dickens or Tolstoy, you know, and throw in words like emoluments and eleemosynary just for fun to make people go nuts.

Those are good words.

But you can't do that telling the story, people go what, you know?

Yeah.

You've got to keep it straight.

You have more time on the page.

Yeah.

You have more time.

Yeah.

And I always go back the next day after it's seasoned and I can pick out mistakes.

I always read it aloud.

Mhm.

Because then if you use the word well publication twice in two sentences you've got to change something, you know.

So that's- What I like about storytelling is you have a lot more tools or different tools, you know, and you get people looking at you, you know?

Yeah.

Yeah, that’s a good- They're saying.

Oh, yeah.

You try to be sensitive to what they’re- That’s right!

what they're hearing.

In a recent one of your recent columns, you quoted Thomas A. Donovan.

Yes.

One of your high school teachers.

TD.

TD, the drill instructor.

He was.

And he said, if you don't master the instrument, you can't play the music.

Until you master the music, you can't improvise on it.

Writing a column like that, the discipline of it and the discipline of being with words every day, that's how you learn a craft.

It's like someone who does play a musical instrument and the hours and hours and hours that they practice.

What is it that if you were to say to someone this, I have learned about writing this, I know about language, this is what's important.

What would you say to them?

That's a pretty broad question.

This is what I've learned about writing.

Yes really broad.

How about lately?

There's a Vermont expression.

Let's get er done [Laughing] You got to do it.

You might as well do it, you know, get it over with.

Not that, not that you don't sit there sometimes in, as you know, absolute catatonia.

Yes.

Waiting for something to come.

This is where it helps to be married to my wife.

She is the source.

And one of my books are dedicated to her.

The never ending source of a million bright Ideas.

Mm hmm.

Bright is slightly ironic because some of them are nuts, but she could always come up with an idea, and that's fantastic, you know?

I say, what am I going to do for this week?

Why don't you write about [Splat]?

I said that’s not bad.

And then hold it, stop right there.

Just give me the idea.

Don't write it.

See she likes to direct to the operations, see?

Yeah.

But she's great.

I could probably count on her once a week to do that if I needed to.

Wow.

But that's really helped.

No wonder you're still married?

Yeah.

And then I can run with it.

I like get her done Get her done, you might as well.

You gotta- Sit down and do it.

And that's, that's the discipline of the column.

That's the discipline.

You've got to, It's got to be in, at a certain time, every week and you do it, get her done.

He started it, because every Monday morning you had to have that thing in your hand when you walked into his class, first thing he said when he walked in hand papers forward, please.

Folded it double, your name and your section and the date was on there.

You handed them up, you got em back Wednesday, every week, without fail.

So I, I've been doing it, for what?

Yeah.

You never get writers block do you?

Oh, yeah.

You do?

Everybody does.

Well, you don't feel like it.

You sit down and you’re halfway through a paragraph, I wonder if I got an email, right?

Yeah, that's block.

That's writer's procrastination.

That's right.

It's, it's, it's, you know, just.

Just not distilling, you know what I mean?

Yeah.

You're getting rid of it.

Yeah.

For the moment.

But you have to stay with it, it's just got to get done.

No problem.

This book, The White Footed Mouse, this is your most recent book?

Tis, yup!

And it's done with Bert Dodson.

And it is a beautiful book.

Yeah.

It is a beautiful book.

And I don't usually do this, but I'm going to ask you to read the book.

Okay?

And then we will sort of conclude with the reading, maybe a couple of questions.

But- and I, I volunteered to show the pictures because what I learned from three year olds is that you have to show the pictures at the same time that you are reading.

Otherwise, it's not a good thing.

You get an awful crick in your neck, when you do that.

Or you can read upside down.

So you can read and I'll show the pictures.

Willem, so you don't have to get a crick.

That's Bert- Bert Dodson is just, he's one of my, well he's one of my favorite people he’s a wonderful guy.

This is page one, yeah.

I had the greatest dad that any kid has ever had.

When I was little, he took me for walks in the fields and the woods, and showed me how to find the nests of meadowlarks and killdeers and bobolinks.

Those are important because they nest on the ground and if you don't find them, you're liable to make a mess.

On sunny days, we played catch together for hours.

He taught me to swim.

Say, I'm so used to doing it, I'm holding it up like this.

He taught me to swim and fish and paddle a canoe.

We built birdhouses together and put them up on poles around our meadow.

[Page turning] He taught me to shoot my little .22 rifle.

Someday soon, he said I'd be going with him to hunting camp and I needed to know how to use it properly.

I couldn't wait!

Dad was a really good hunter.

He used to say, Don't ever point your gun at anything you don't intend to shoot, and don't ever kill anything- fish, bird or animal- you don't intend to eat.

When I was eight, I was finally old enough to go.

The first Friday in deer season, I ran home after school and changed into warm clothes.

Mom packed some groceries in my Dad's pack basket.

Dad came home from work about five o’clock We put everything into his old Jeep and headed up Hopkins Mountain toward our camp.

It was way after dark.

This is the trouble with new books.

There we go.

After a while, we couldn't go any further, so we left the Jeep and hiked up the trail with a flashlight.

My pack was heavy.

Dad took some of my stuff into his pack basket.

It was really cold.

The snow crunched under our feet and it seemed like a long time before we saw the camp through the trees.

It was almost hidden in some hemlocks beside a little brook.

It was dark and spooky.

We went in.

Inside, it was even colder than out in the woods.

We could see our breath, Dad lit a lamp and stuffed some birch bark into the stove.

In about a minute he had a little fire going.

He fed it some small pieces of wood and pulled down a blanket from the rafters for me.

[Page turning] We sat in front of the stove, warming our hands, eating cheese and crackers.

All of a sudden Dad said, Look up to your right!

I looked a little white footed mouse was walking along the top of the wall in the angle just below the roof.

He walked until he came to the spot right above where the stovepipe went through the wall that had insulated the pipe with a piece of clay tile packed with concrete.

It was always warm when the stove was going, but it never got hot.

The mouse slowly put one foot down onto the pipe to test it, then he climbed onto it and lay down with his long tail curled over his nose.

He was watching us, but didn't seem to be afraid.

I skipped to page.

[Willem sighs] After a few minutes I got up and very carefully set a tiny piece of cheese on the clay pipe right in front of his nose.

He sniffed at it, took it in his little- in his tiny front paws and began nibbling at it.

Don't feed him, said Dad.

I don't want mice in the camp.

I'll set a trap for him tomorrow.

Did I miss a page?

[Willem blows] Okay.

All right.

The next day, we hunted all day.

We didn't see any deer, but sitting very still.

We saw a flock- We had a flock of chickadees all around us for a few minutes.

And we saw weasel, half turned to white for the winter, peeking from a big hollow log.

In the afternoon we spotted a porcupine up a tree chewing on the bark.

Can I shoot him Dad?

I asked.

Yep, he said, if you’re sure you want to eat him.

I didn't think I want to do that.

So we left the porky alone and walked away.

That evening in camp, the mouse came back to the warm pipe.

I got up to give him some more cheese, but Dad said, Wait let me get the mousetrap.

You can put the cheese on that.

But Dad!

He's not bothering anybody!

He just wants to get warm, like us.

Doesn't matter.

Mice in the camp, they got to go.

Well, okay, I said, are we going to have him for breakfast or lunch?

[Audience laughs] [Applause] That's the climax.

And now for the denouement.

We closed up camp and headed home Sunday afternoon.

The mouse was back on the warm clay pipe watching us.

I know that mice probably can't wink, but I'm pretty sure that one winked at me Great book.

Thank you.

[Applause] I love it.

Yeah?

I love it.

[Applause dwindles] Have you read it to a lot of kids?

Do you get good reactions?

Yeah, pretty much.

The thing is, it really happened.

But I wasn't a kid.

I was grown up.

Yeah?

And the two of us went to camp and we're sitting there, we're sitting in front of the stove trying to get warm.

It was so cold drinking Jim Beam and eating cheese.

And here came this mouse.

And he wasn't, you know, mice because he wasn't he was going [Laughing] Frozen, half-stiff.

and he got right on the stovepipe and sat there and I thought, isn’t that cute?

And a little while later I got up to go out and get, chop a hole in the ice in the brook, get a bucket of water came back in and the mouse and I were about a foot from each other.

And he must have been, you know, he was steeped in the fumes from the whiskey.

He must have had gone crazy, but he never moved, never blinked Awe, you’re sweet.

I went down just fore I put out the light that night.

I put a piece of cheese on the pipe in front of his nose in the morning.

They were both gone, you know?

Oh- He probably was down, But he had a nest down behind the silverware drawer.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

But it was cold down there.

And there was a story.

There was a story perfect for kids except for the Jim Beam part.

That's right.

That worked out good!

We changed that.

So I think we've given you quite a lot to think about.

So if anybody has any questions for Willem or comments, this is your opportunity.

I wonder if you're already working on your next kid's book because this is delightful.

Yes [Laughing] I just started.

Yeah, I'll do another one.

Yeah.

Like Bert is getting on in years, so I've got to do a few more while he still can do these.

He’s getting a little tremble, tremor now, so we're getting near toward the end of it, but yeah, I'll do another one.

I think with picture books, it's the match between the words and the pictures and what a great match this is.

That’s what makes it.

He’s so good.

He just catches New England.

And he tells his own story in the pictures.

He does.

Beautifully done.

That's Bert.

Willem we actually- we absolutely love you and Windows to the Wild.

Could you tell us your two or three favorite hikes in New Hampshire?

Oh, yeah, you bet.

The ridge from Lakes of the Clouds over to Madison, you're above Timberline the whole way.

It's just a decent day.

Even if it isn’t, it’s just an incredible hike.

Katahdin, does that count?

That's not New Hampshire.

But it's just a beau- Okay, sorry, beautiful mountain.

We did, we hiked Hedgehog a couple of months ago with Atticus and Tom, and that was fun.

I'd like to go back there, but it wasn't a very spectacular climb, you know?

I think probably the the presidentials are my favorites.

Just wondering, in all your adventuring, what's the most dangerous situation you've ever been in?

I guess when I was younger, rock climbing and running rapids with no brains and no life jackets and no helmets, you know, and now nothing really happens anymore.

We did a couple dumps in recent years you know, canoe dumps on Arctic rivers, that's exciting.

A lot of grizzly bears yeah, where we go.

But I never met one yet that didn't leave as fast as he could When he's- after he saw us.

One right behind me once I didn't know about it.

I was fishing, I'm having a great time.

My buddy way up at the other end of the pool hollered, no, no!

What?

What is that?

I think he wants me to turn around so I turn around and there was a big old grizzly bear right there up on the top of the bank, maybe eight feet away.

And he was sniffing and looking like that.

And I said, Hey, I got, and I wasn’t afraid I couldn’t- I can't believe it later, it was just exciting you know?

My buddy said, when you turned around, you swelled up just like a cat.

[Laughing] I got to three and a half ounce rod here that could cause some damage before I get out.

But you give me 5 minutes, I'm gone.

And he gave me- He turned around, walked away.

I could see the bushes going like that.

And I left because I was in his fishing spot.

[Laughing] Well, thank you Willem.

My pleasure.

Thanks for answering all our questions and telling us great stories.

[Applause] Well done.

[Applause continues] ♪♪