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What the Stones Remember: A Life Rediscovered
In this exquisitely written memoir, poet Patrick Lane describes his raw and tender emergence at age sixty from a lifetime of alcohol and drug addiction. He spent the first year of his sobriety close to home, tending his garden, where he cast his mind back over his life, searching for the memories he'd tried to drown in vodka. Lane has gardened for as long as he can remember, and his garden's life has become inseparable from his own. A new bloom on a plant, a skirmish among the birds, the way a tree bends in the wind, and the slow, measured change of seasons invariably bring to his mind an episode from his eventful past. What the Stones Remember is the emerging chronicle of Lane's attempt to face those memories, as well as his new self—to rediscover his life. In this powerful and beautifully written book, Lane offers readers an unflinching and unsentimental account of coming to one's senses in the presence of nature.
272 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2004
7 people are currently reading
193 people want to read
About the author
Patrick Lane
85 books39 followersPatrick Lane was born in Nelson, British Columbia, Canada, on March 26, 1939. He has no formal education beyond high school in Vernon, B.C. From 1957 to 1968 with his young wife, Mary, he raised three children, Mark, Christopher, and Kathryn, and began working at a variety of jobs, from common labourer, truck driver, Cat skinner, chokerman, boxcar loader, Industrial First-Aid Man in the northern bush, to clerk at a number of sawmills in the Interior of British Columbia. He has been a salesman, office manager, and an Industrial Accountant. In 1968 his first wife divorced him. Much of his life after 1968 has been spent as an itinerant poet, wandering over three continents and many countries. He began writing with serious intent in 1960, practicing his craft late at night in small-town western Canada until he moved to Vancouver in early 1965 to work and to join the new generation of artists and writers who were coming of age in the early Sixties.
In 1966, with bill bissett and Seymour Mayne, he established Very Stone House, publishing the new post-war generation of poets. In 1968, he decided to devote his life exclusively to writing, travelling to South America where he lived for two years. On his return, he established a new relationship with his second wife, Carol, had two more children, Michael and Richard, and settled first in the Okanagan Valley in 1972 and then in 1974 on the west coast of Canada at Middle Point near the fishing village of Pender Harbour on The Sunshine Coast where he worked as a carpenter and building contractor. In 1978, he divorced and went to work as Writer-in-Residence at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg where he began his life with the poet, Lorna Crozier. Since then, he has been a resident writer at Concordia University in Montreal, The University of Alberta in Edmonton, the Saskatoon Public Library, and the University of Toronto. He taught English Literature at The University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon from 1986 to 1990, and Creative Writing at the University of Victoria, British Columbia from 1991 to 2004. He is presently retired from institutional teaching and leads private writing retreats as well as teaching at such schools as The Banff Writing Workshops, ‘Booming Ground’ at the University of British Columbia, The Victoria Writing School, and The Sage Hill Experience in Saskatchewan. He and his wife, Lorna Crozier, presently reside in a small community outside Victoria where he gardens and works at his craft.
His poetry, short stories, criticism, and non-fiction have won many prizes over the past forty-five years, including The Governor-General’s Award for “Poems: New & Selected” in 1979, The Canadian Authors Association Award for his “Selected Poems” in 1988, and, in 1987, a “Nellie” award (Canada) and The National Radio Award (USA) for the best public radio program for the script titled “Chile,” co-authored with Lorna Crozier. He has received major awards from The Canada Council, The Ontario Arts Council, The Saskatchewan Arts Board, The Manitoba Arts Board, The Ontario Arts Council, and the British Columbia Arts Board. He has received National Magazine awards for both his poetry and his fiction. He is the author of more than twenty books and he has been called by many writers and critics “the best poet of his generation.”
As a critic and commentator, he appears regularly on CBC, the national radio service in Canada, and on numerous other media outlets across Canada.
He has appeared at literary festivals around the world and has read and published his work in many countries including England, France, the Czech Republic, Italy, China, Japan, Chile, Colombia, the Netherlands, and Russia. His poetry and fiction appear in all major Canadian anthologies of English literature. A critical monograph of his life and writing titled "Patrick Lane,” by George Woodcock, was published by ECW Press.
In 1966, with bill bissett and Seymour Mayne, he established Very Stone House, publishing the new post-war generation of poets. In 1968, he decided to devote his life exclusively to writing, travelling to South America where he lived for two years. On his return, he established a new relationship with his second wife, Carol, had two more children, Michael and Richard, and settled first in the Okanagan Valley in 1972 and then in 1974 on the west coast of Canada at Middle Point near the fishing village of Pender Harbour on The Sunshine Coast where he worked as a carpenter and building contractor. In 1978, he divorced and went to work as Writer-in-Residence at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg where he began his life with the poet, Lorna Crozier. Since then, he has been a resident writer at Concordia University in Montreal, The University of Alberta in Edmonton, the Saskatoon Public Library, and the University of Toronto. He taught English Literature at The University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon from 1986 to 1990, and Creative Writing at the University of Victoria, British Columbia from 1991 to 2004. He is presently retired from institutional teaching and leads private writing retreats as well as teaching at such schools as The Banff Writing Workshops, ‘Booming Ground’ at the University of British Columbia, The Victoria Writing School, and The Sage Hill Experience in Saskatchewan. He and his wife, Lorna Crozier, presently reside in a small community outside Victoria where he gardens and works at his craft.
His poetry, short stories, criticism, and non-fiction have won many prizes over the past forty-five years, including The Governor-General’s Award for “Poems: New & Selected” in 1979, The Canadian Authors Association Award for his “Selected Poems” in 1988, and, in 1987, a “Nellie” award (Canada) and The National Radio Award (USA) for the best public radio program for the script titled “Chile,” co-authored with Lorna Crozier. He has received major awards from The Canada Council, The Ontario Arts Council, The Saskatchewan Arts Board, The Manitoba Arts Board, The Ontario Arts Council, and the British Columbia Arts Board. He has received National Magazine awards for both his poetry and his fiction. He is the author of more than twenty books and he has been called by many writers and critics “the best poet of his generation.”
As a critic and commentator, he appears regularly on CBC, the national radio service in Canada, and on numerous other media outlets across Canada.
He has appeared at literary festivals around the world and has read and published his work in many countries including England, France, the Czech Republic, Italy, China, Japan, Chile, Colombia, the Netherlands, and Russia. His poetry and fiction appear in all major Canadian anthologies of English literature. A critical monograph of his life and writing titled "Patrick Lane,” by George Woodcock, was published by ECW Press.
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Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews
January 28, 2018
Standing here among the sword ferns my senses seem to be thin glass, so acute at their edges I am afraid I will cut myself simply by touching the silicon edge of a bamboo leaf. The flicker's blade of beak as it slices into the apple makes me wince. My hands are pale animals. The smallest sounds, a junco flitting between viburnum leaves, a drop of water falling on the cedar deck, make me cringe. I can smell the bitter iron in the mosses on the apple tree's branches. My flesh at times is in agony, and I feel as if I have come out from some shadowed place into light for the first time. I feel, for the first time in years, alive.
I came to this book after reading Patrick Lane's Deep River Night: a story set in a 1960's logging camp in the B.C. Interior that felt so true in its details of life there, in the details of hopelessness and addiction, that I knew that Lane was writing from some experience. What the Stones Remember is the memoir that Lane began in 2001, and as it recounts his struggles to find his way back to living after a lifetime of drug and alcohol addiction, he also dips frequently into his far past – from his childhood of abuse and neglect to the stretch that he did spend in a logging camp on the North Thompson River as a First Aid Man – and as complementary reads, these two books focus and refocus, through fiction and non-, a lens on a remarkable life. Patrick Lane has been called “the greatest poet of his generation” and his writing here is never less than magical; I was transfixed.
The opal drop of water the chickadee drank is no different than the droplet at the tip of a bare apple tree bud that I lifted my hand to. I extend my trembling finger and the water slides onto my fingernail. I lift it to my lips and take a sip of what was once fog. It is a single cold on the tip of my tongue. I feel I am some delicate creature come newly to this place for, though I know it well, I must learn again this small half-acre of land with its intricate beauties, its many arrangements of earth, air, water, and stone.
What makes this memoir special is the focus that Lane trains on his patch of garden out on Vancouver Island: from the abundance of life that blithely flourishes, oblivious to the pained and petty lives of nearby humans, to the physical work and meditative planning that transform him body and soul, reclaiming an unpruned garden is a worthy metaphor for reclaiming a life. As other reviewers have noted, Lane might be guilty of going on a bit too long about every weed and bug, but extravagance is a small complaint. There is a naturalness to Lane working away with pitchfork and pruning shears and getting lost in some memory; the time shifts always feel organic, and the stories that Lane shares from his past are candid and fascinating; the conclusions he draws are wise.
The garden begins with my body. I am this place, though I feel it at the most attenuated level imaginable. Once dead, I am come alive again. Forty-five years of addiction and I am a strangeling in this simple world. To be sober, to be without alcohol and drugs in my cells, is new to me and every thing near to me is both familiar and strange.
I did find it interesting that for a recovery memoir, Lane only hints at his addictions; focussing more on their effects on those around him than the actual details of his apparent debauchery. I also found it interesting how many small details from his memories here eventually made it into Deep River Night: it makes me wonder if by not writing about his life as a drunk in this memoir, Lane had to eventually novelise those experiences in order to finally exorcise them. The following describes life in the logging camp, details of which made it into the novel:
The Sikhs, lonely and ostracized, fought each other on weekends with fists and knives, the white men in the bunkhouses raped Indian girls they'd had shipped up from Kamloops, the seventy-year-old Chinese cook sat drunk in his room drawing pictures of his child-bride back in China, the white husbands locked their wives in closets and bathrooms to keep them quiet, people drank and traded a wife or daughter for a bottle of whiskey. Drunks, passed out, never saw their wife or husband abuse a child or sleep with a best friend. I writhe with the memory of those bitter, unhappy times. I roll over, get out of bed, and walk into the garden.
Even if you know nothing else of Patrick Lane, What the Stones Remember is a fascinating read: the man has lived an extraordinary life, his writing is masterful, and the format of following his progress over a year of gardening works very well. As a complementary read for me, it's that much more elevated and I thoroughly enjoyed the experience.
June 2, 2013
Having suffered with addiction and a broken family as well as having built and lost gardens of my own. Reading Mr. Lane was like having a kindred spirit that I have never met before touch my soul. It was almost as if we met as strangers in some cafe and he told me of his life in every detail and then left like a phantom into the woods and mist of the Canada I knew as a boy.He is truly an amazing author. I highly recommend his book especially to those who have suffered with addiction or have had a father or husband who did. It is a rare look into the bare laid beauty and pain that exist somehow simultaneously within the addicted soul.Mr. Lane is truly a Canadian treasure as well as the worlds.
August 30, 2019
A gardener's profound internal musings, beautifully rendered, but mixed with traumatic childhood memories. The book chapters roughly follow a calendar year in Patrick Lane's garden as he recovers from decades of alcohol and drug abuse. The recovery aspect weaves throughout the lovely language, but I would by no means call this a book about recovery. Yet I suppose that for someone in recovery, those threads might stand out. I love gardening, lived in the Pacific Northwest, and I love words. If any of those describe you, you might like this memoir.
However, the nuggets of horror come unannounced, so it can make for sub-optimal bedtime reading.
However, the nuggets of horror come unannounced, so it can make for sub-optimal bedtime reading.
August 10, 2011
This is one of the most vivid and powerful memoirs I've read.
February 25, 2015
Lane, as a poet turned memoirist, captures the struggles of overcoming alcoholism beautifully in the context of his garden. My favorite quote: "At the heart of every alcoholic is the drink he will never find." It is a unique form (each chapter corresponds with a month) and the setting switches back and forth between Lane's present garden and the haunting memories of his youth. The form and prose make it a dense, slow read, but it is well worth it.
January 1, 2023
Oh my. I am not a gardener. Not really. But I do adore trees and have been proud of my planting hundreds or thousands along the way some for occasion such as the birth of my eldest son. Joining groups including The Hardwood Action Committee for its innocent double entendre.
Suddenly my efforts seem paltry and myself lazy. And it is not about gardens even though it is the name on the map.
I am chastened that a person can be so focussed aware and as retentive about anything as Lane is about gardens. It is a lesson in being actively present or in the modernised vernacular mindful. And it follows that this ability will be a feature of the observers relationship with the world generally.
But there is naught for his or your comfort necessarily here. What can be experienced cannot be expunged only transsubstantiated into (hopefully) less terrifying metaphors.
There are regular elements of the story which appear suddenly with such sudden effect that I found myself taking refuge in the simple lists of the plants and animals discussed in the ending chapter.
A pause.
There is stillness there. But not calm.
The effect is of the momentary pause of the rains returning after the dry season the maddening torrent held by surface tension or some other magic while all the while the power of life strives towards an inevitable end.
We cannot help it. And if we try the cost is extreme.
This is a book about the redemption available to those who brave the stories of our lives staring directly at existence and death together.
Just like the seasons in the garden.
I felt myself grow reading this book.
Suddenly my efforts seem paltry and myself lazy. And it is not about gardens even though it is the name on the map.
I am chastened that a person can be so focussed aware and as retentive about anything as Lane is about gardens. It is a lesson in being actively present or in the modernised vernacular mindful. And it follows that this ability will be a feature of the observers relationship with the world generally.
But there is naught for his or your comfort necessarily here. What can be experienced cannot be expunged only transsubstantiated into (hopefully) less terrifying metaphors.
There are regular elements of the story which appear suddenly with such sudden effect that I found myself taking refuge in the simple lists of the plants and animals discussed in the ending chapter.
A pause.
There is stillness there. But not calm.
The effect is of the momentary pause of the rains returning after the dry season the maddening torrent held by surface tension or some other magic while all the while the power of life strives towards an inevitable end.
We cannot help it. And if we try the cost is extreme.
This is a book about the redemption available to those who brave the stories of our lives staring directly at existence and death together.
Just like the seasons in the garden.
I felt myself grow reading this book.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 13, 2018
This was a truly beautiful book that I read at an important time in my life, pondering how alcoholism has manifested in loved ones. Although I glossed over some of the garden descriptions, they were each unique and lovely, and contributed to the overall meditative feeling of the book as the author began to reconnect to the world around him. This is a powerful read by a skilled poet and narrator. Would recommend, especially to those touched by alcoholism and drug abuse .
August 19, 2020
Beautifully written account of a troubled past and a life recovered.
March 8, 2024
Very well written. Too grim in places for adolescents though. A good read for people struggling with addiction, or those who want read a book by a writer's craftsman..
October 11, 2017
WHAT THE STONES REMEMBER: A LIFE REDISCOVERED is Patrick Lane’s memoir masterpiece, which didn’t have much of a run when it was first published in 2004, and now is available only through Shambhala Press (as far as I can tell), in hard copy or as an ebook. This gem has added quality more than quantity to the literary landscape.
Lane is a poet, and the prose of this 259-page book is almost to sweet to sip, too poetic to sniff. The pleasure of the language matures in the mind like wine matures in the mouth, leaving a structure and an aftertaste which haunts the tastebuds. In a paragraph on page 4 he announces that he is withdrawing from 45 years of drinking, and after two months of treatment is but barely detoxed
ˆStanding here among the sword ferns my senses seem to be thin glass, so acute at their edges I am afraid I will cut myself simply by touching the silicon edge of a bamboo leaf. The flicker’s blade of beak as it slices into the apple makes me wince. My hands are pale animals. … My flesh at times is in agony, and I feel as if I have come out from some shadowed place into the light for the first time. I feel, for the first time in years, alive.”
Sit back for a moment and savor the words, the images.
I confess to never having heard of Patrick Lane before my daughter gave me this book seven years ago, though he has been well known in Canada, and has won several prestigious awards there. He also had a popular Canadian television gardening program, Recreating Eden. His book is also about gardening, in the same way that the loaves and fishes are about breakfast.
His biography states the elusive factoids common to the lives of geniuses; barely finished high school, several marriages, five children, addiction and recovery, teaches at a university. Take any one of those facts, and follow it down to the root and you come up with WHAT THE STONES REMEMBER.
His book has a different name in Canada, THERE IS A SEASON. That’s a mysterious marketing/publishing move, but so be it. There Is A Season is available on amazon (though not as an ebook), with a different cover. I am glad to report that there are only three copies left in stock. People are still reading it, probably Canadians.
The book was nominated for the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Award for non-fiction in 2004. This is a curious nomination for a person who had written 26 previous books or collections of poetry and won numerous prizes before 2004. Will I still be a “new writer” after 26 books? I guess the thing is that the American publishing world is a beast unto itself.
The blurb on the book’s front cover is by Alice Munro, “To read this book is to enter a state of enchantment.” Read it and become enchanted. Also inspired, challenged, and humbled.
Lane is a poet, and the prose of this 259-page book is almost to sweet to sip, too poetic to sniff. The pleasure of the language matures in the mind like wine matures in the mouth, leaving a structure and an aftertaste which haunts the tastebuds. In a paragraph on page 4 he announces that he is withdrawing from 45 years of drinking, and after two months of treatment is but barely detoxed
ˆStanding here among the sword ferns my senses seem to be thin glass, so acute at their edges I am afraid I will cut myself simply by touching the silicon edge of a bamboo leaf. The flicker’s blade of beak as it slices into the apple makes me wince. My hands are pale animals. … My flesh at times is in agony, and I feel as if I have come out from some shadowed place into the light for the first time. I feel, for the first time in years, alive.”
Sit back for a moment and savor the words, the images.
I confess to never having heard of Patrick Lane before my daughter gave me this book seven years ago, though he has been well known in Canada, and has won several prestigious awards there. He also had a popular Canadian television gardening program, Recreating Eden. His book is also about gardening, in the same way that the loaves and fishes are about breakfast.
His biography states the elusive factoids common to the lives of geniuses; barely finished high school, several marriages, five children, addiction and recovery, teaches at a university. Take any one of those facts, and follow it down to the root and you come up with WHAT THE STONES REMEMBER.
His book has a different name in Canada, THERE IS A SEASON. That’s a mysterious marketing/publishing move, but so be it. There Is A Season is available on amazon (though not as an ebook), with a different cover. I am glad to report that there are only three copies left in stock. People are still reading it, probably Canadians.
The book was nominated for the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Award for non-fiction in 2004. This is a curious nomination for a person who had written 26 previous books or collections of poetry and won numerous prizes before 2004. Will I still be a “new writer” after 26 books? I guess the thing is that the American publishing world is a beast unto itself.
The blurb on the book’s front cover is by Alice Munro, “To read this book is to enter a state of enchantment.” Read it and become enchanted. Also inspired, challenged, and humbled.
February 6, 2015
This book was such a wonderful gem! It is part field journal, part memoir and all so poetic. The descriptions of his garden and the nature that has surrounded him his whole life is peaceful and envelops you in a feeling of serenity while the memoir is tragic and heartbreaking. It is bittersweet, heartfelt and honest. At first I found myself becoming impatient with his wordy descriptions of every little detail of his garden and then soon found myself craving the same ability to sit in nature and observe such small details. But this book is about a man who is overcoming a 40+ year addiction to alcohol and on some level I could relate to his journey. My journey not being so tragic and drawn out but more so my journey involves struggling with addiction to old patterns and habits while longing for that same connection to nature that I had growing up. I found this book inspiring and refreshing despite the heartbreak.
July 18, 2009
Searing, descriptive writing. So far, I would recommend this book to anyone on their own journey into sobriety AS WELL AS all who love words and reading about others' psychic journeys.
Now that I'm through it, I must say at times, I felt myself growing impatient with his excruciatingly detailed accounts of his garden. However, then he would weave them up into a tale from his past that he was working to reposition in his consciousness, or at least come to some peace with. The transitions were magical. There were two points in the book where I was drawn into an emotion so powerful that it felt similar to living the moment. It is rare and special when a book does this for me. His descriptions of growing up poor during WWII and his work to become one of Canada's most lauded living poets were amazing, too.
Now that I'm through it, I must say at times, I felt myself growing impatient with his excruciatingly detailed accounts of his garden. However, then he would weave them up into a tale from his past that he was working to reposition in his consciousness, or at least come to some peace with. The transitions were magical. There were two points in the book where I was drawn into an emotion so powerful that it felt similar to living the moment. It is rare and special when a book does this for me. His descriptions of growing up poor during WWII and his work to become one of Canada's most lauded living poets were amazing, too.
May 15, 2011
Canadian poet Patrick Lane has seen many seasons of violence and sorrow — most of them lived out under the dark shadow of alcohol and drug addiction. As such, the memoir of his journey to sobriety is not a “light” read — it is, ultimately, a hopeful work about beauty blooming from life’s pain. Lane anchors his recovery story in the natural world, and the passages about his garden have a Psalm-like attention to creation’s splendor. This is a book to be read on a hammock or a lawn chair, with green leaves or blue sky overhead.
- from http://adelekonyndyk.wordpress.com/20...
- from http://adelekonyndyk.wordpress.com/20...
April 10, 2014
Patrick Lane's talents in poetry made this memoire one to savour, to be amazed and to be horrified all in a bearable balance. He recounts his first year of sobriety after 45 years of drinking and drugs through four seasons in his garden. The pain of his childhood and early adult years are remembered and re-lived within the protection of his beloved flowers, birds and 2 cats - one his and one his wife's, the poet Lorna Crozier. True to the title it is a journey of a life rediscovered as well as of a relationship treasured, and a fearlessness to face the darkness as his healing begins.
March 27, 2008
The memoir of a poet after 45 years of drug and alcohol addiction. Very tender, lots of brutal memoiries too, like from childhood (not just physically brutal). Beautiful and inspiring. It makes me want to be a writer. Lane is good at slipping back and forth between peaceful musings/observations of his garden and the totally calm, almost objective retelling of his hard life. I admire how he's come to peace with all of it.
February 18, 2009
Lane's poetry comes through clearly in this memoir of his first year going through addiction recovery from drugs and alcohol. With tales scattered through the book describing his past childhood and young adulthood, Lane fashions his words around his treasured garden. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and highly recommend it.
May 10, 2015
This is a moving memoir of a 60 year old Canadian poet who spent most of his adult life as an alcoholic and drug addict (though he published many books of poetry and fiction during these years). It is the first year of his sobriety which he recounts along with the year in his garden in Vancouver island. Very tender and engaging
October 4, 2015
This is memoir: not the contrivance of story or clever telling, but a bare-knuckled search for love and meaning beneath life's decay. From a poet/gardener who has learned that the only way to live is the way birds, spiders, fish, frogs, rocks and trees do. I could never have appreciated this book until this late age, and I appreciate it completely.
September 5, 2009
I loved this book. His prose made very clear his poetic background. The writing was amazing and the emotions palpable. It is very heavy subject matter, but dealt with in such a beautiful manner. I highly recommend it.
June 4, 2011
I loved this, I felt it explained the feeling that one can get or hope to obtain when gardening and tending to the plants and space one is trying to create. When I realized it was also about recovery, I recommended it to others as well as understood the peace that gardening can provide.
November 2, 2008
I guess I just like to read about dysfunctional people. I like memoirs.
November 17, 2008
Beautifully, tenderly written memoir...quiet and deep and poetic...well worth a read. The garden metaphors and references become excessive at a point, but never mind.
January 3, 2009
Beautifully written. Little nuggets of insight in surprising places. Read when you can concentrate and absorb. Entrancing.
All that said, not a super fave.
All that said, not a super fave.
Read
January 23, 2009811.54 Lan
April 5, 2009
Such beautiful, descriptive writing. A touching memoir.
May 6, 2013
This is an achingly beautiful book.
February 3, 2015
An excellent, positive book.
Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews