THERE IS A SEASON by Patrick Lane

I learned a lot of new words after reading this piece. To read this memoir you need the fluent vocabulary of gardener and a mountain man to appreciate his detailing of his respect for the land he lives on.
I feel he was modest, he wasn't writing down impressive words in order to stump a teenaged reader who is trying to analyze it, but instead a colourful array of colourful nouns that give the wildlife depth when he spoke of it. Although he might actually be in love with nature, the tone of his storytelling was a lot more conversational meaning he did not over detail. The things he described were important to the topic; when telling the reader about the setting, Lane used simile, metaphor and personification in his diction: "Grasses...lay like fallen hair upon the earth, and their new green spears caught the wind with frail hands." When he does get into detail it is appropriate because these are the fine points that he was noticing as it was happening, he talks about a cougar that was recently shot out of a tree in front of him. "I remember touching the rough blond hair of a dead cat's nape, the curve of its long yellow incisors, and the dead ball of its eye as it stared sightless through me to the fading sun." Here we see how stunned he really is by witnessing death for the first time.
I enjoy the way he remembers the places in a physical way, like those memories of those places are like remembering who he is. "My bones remember the water and the stones," "...the stones remain like ghosts in my hands...” I having gone camping since I was nine years old, gone on canoe two week long canoe trips through Algonquin Park and Dumoine, and a veteran cottager so I can relate to Patrick's love for the outdoors.