Winging Home

A Palette of Birds

By (author): Harold Rhenisch
ISBN 9781897142127
Softcover | Publication Date: January 15, 2006
Book Dimensions: 6 in x 9 in
256 Pages

About the Book

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 wouldn’t 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 Home: 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.

About the Author(s)

Harold Rhenisch lives in 150 Mile House, BC. He won the Confederation Poetry Prize, 1991, and the Arc Poem of the Year Award and the Critic's Desk Award for best long poetry review, 2003. He has been a five-time runner-up in the CBC/Tilden/Saturday Night Literary Contest and won the BC & Yukon Community Newspapers Association Award for Best Arts and Culture Writing, 1996. His non-fiction book Tom Thomson's Shack was shortlisted for two BC Book Prizes in 2000.

Reviews

“Even non-birders might enjoy this lovely meditation, while those of use who like to watch will be quietly thrilled.” —Georgia Straight