Captain Mathias Dubilier first fell in love with Lake Champlain at age 18, when he moved to Burlington to live with his father in 1978. He had sailed before then and loved it, but on Lake Champlain his interest became a lifelong passion. Now 66, Dubilier has plied waters across the world, including on a three-year tour from Vermont to Turkey, but Lake Champlain is still where he feels most at home.
For a few years, Dubilier owned and operated first Whistling Man Schooner Company and then Buttercup Cruises. He introduced countless tourists to the lake, pointing out sights from Oakledge Park to Juniper Island. He regaled his customers with well-documented historical stories and with folktales from Indigenous peoples.
Dubilier also spent 12 years writing for various Vermont newspapers, including the Vanguard Press and the Essex Reporter. When his tour customers learned that Dubilier was also a journalist and a writer, they often asked him, “Why don’t you write a book about the lake?”
Back then, Dubilier’s answer was simple: He just didn’t have time. But once he retired and sold his company to a friend, Dubilier was finally ready to share his love of the lake. In This Way but Not Here: An Ode to Lake Champlain, Captain Dubilier delivers the stories he told on his tours, as well as his personal reflections on place, tourism and home.
Special Event: This Way but Not Here: An Ode to Lake Champlain | Book Launch! Friday, May 8, 7 p.m., at Phoenix Books in Burlington.
Why did you decide to write this book?
I wanted to give people one example of how to fall in love with a place. I believe that one of the ways in which we can save ourselves and our planet is by falling in love with a place. It can be any place. I’m just showing you “this way,” but your “here” might be some other place.
What is your favorite place on Lake Champlain?
My favorite place on Lake Champlain is not just a tiny island but a story, too. It’s the story of Odziohozo, who was born from the land which became the lake, and then he wandered, and then he came home, and then he turned himself into that rock we see in between Juniper Island and Shelburne Point.
What is the most outrageous thing that happened to you while you were a tour boat captain?
The most outrageous story in the book is about a swimmer I rescued while giving a tour who didn’t have the ability and yet decided to swim across the lake to show his love for a woman. It made me wonder about what the lake can make us do.
Were you ever in danger out on the lake?
I’ve sailed across the Atlantic through a number of gales, I escaped from a burning ship in the Mediterranean, and I’ve been in a storm for days in the Bermuda Triangle, but what I try to tell new crew when I’m training them is that danger isn’t something that is external. Danger lives in your head. And you should let it live there. You should make space for it. It helps you to prepare.
I tell new sailors this: It’s good to have fear. Fear sits next to me on all my voyages, and it keeps asking me, “What if this happens?” And I answer. And that way I know if I am prepared. But what you don’t want to do is turn your head and look in the eyes of fear. Fear is like Medusa. It can turn your ability to respond to stone. Even for a simple outing on the lake, it’s good to think about danger and give fear a seat right next to you.
What’s next for you? Any new projects in the works?
I’m working on a book about how I recovered from a brain hemorrhage I suffered in August 2024 by sailing my dinghy in Burlington harbor. It was so fascinating to start again with something so simple and yet so instructive, not just in skills but in the fundamental challenges to life.
I also finally finished the novel I have been working on for 11 years, Limits of the Known World. It is about a Euro-American on an odyssey from America to Istanbul as he contemplates questions of what it means to be a man, the significance of heritage, and whether solitude is escape or a form of love.
This Way but Not Here: An Ode to Lake Champlain by Mathias Dublier is available at Phoenix Books and through your local bookstore.
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The post Mathias Dubilier Writes a Love Letter to Lake Champlain in ‘This Way but Not Here’ appeared first on Seven Days.