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Winging Home: Palette of Birds
In British Columbia's remote and exotic Cariboo Plateau, ""Everything is slow. Everything is happening at the same speed, which is no speed at all."" Harold Rhenisch has spent eleven years watching birds every day from his house on the shore of 108 Lake—at this speed, but you wouldnt know it from reading Winging Home . Known as ""one of Canada's master prose stylists,"" Rhenisch dissects avian behaviour with the ear of a poet and the mouth of a stand-up comedian. His blackbirds are a jug band in full flight, his robins drunken bachelors on a jag, and his eagles decrepit, stumblebum scavengers. With lively illustrations by noted bird artist Tom Godin, Winging A Palette of Birds is more than just writing about the natural world. It is a lyrical, evocative memoir of life in the Cariboo that crackles with humorous, often startling observations of birds and men set amidst the wild beauty of British Columbia.
256 pages, Paperback
First published January 15, 2006
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June 3, 2013
As the Vancouver Sun says: "Harold Rhenisch has a farmer's keen weather-eye for the perpetual, minute, almost magical transformations that make up the natural world and a gift for coining images of intense immediacy."
It was also funny and not only about birds.
An excerpt:
"Now that the loon had also proven himself more than a match for the hunting prowess of a bunch of skateboarding eagles with blond streaks in their hair and studs in their ears and brown toques pulled down low over their foreheads, the boarders turned their attention to the otters. In their sunscreen, with the coconut oil rubbed into their skins, with their shades and their bucket of cold drinks, the otters had watched the whole heavyweight bout nonchalantly from the top of the muskrat house. They lay up there on the roof like a bunch of models flown down from Toronto for a photo shoot in Jamaica, modelling this winter's swimsuits for the cruise set - nothing you'd want to swim in, of course, but they looked damn good - splashing in the turquoise water above the white sand, sipping cold daiquiris, never venturing into town. In town, the natives lived in peeling houses that were falling down around their ears and talk was of revolution. Going into town would be a definite mistake."
It was also funny and not only about birds.
An excerpt:
"Now that the loon had also proven himself more than a match for the hunting prowess of a bunch of skateboarding eagles with blond streaks in their hair and studs in their ears and brown toques pulled down low over their foreheads, the boarders turned their attention to the otters. In their sunscreen, with the coconut oil rubbed into their skins, with their shades and their bucket of cold drinks, the otters had watched the whole heavyweight bout nonchalantly from the top of the muskrat house. They lay up there on the roof like a bunch of models flown down from Toronto for a photo shoot in Jamaica, modelling this winter's swimsuits for the cruise set - nothing you'd want to swim in, of course, but they looked damn good - splashing in the turquoise water above the white sand, sipping cold daiquiris, never venturing into town. In town, the natives lived in peeling houses that were falling down around their ears and talk was of revolution. Going into town would be a definite mistake."
Displaying 1 of 1 review