Highlights from Above the Waterfall by Ron Rash

I like being able to view the highlights I made in books I read on a Kindle long after I finished the books. These are the highlights I made on Above the Waterfall which I finished reading October 13, 2018. But with a few mouse clicks I can enjoy again, almost instantaneously, the descriptive prose of Ron Rash.

Yellow highlight | Page: 3
Honeysuckle vines twine green cords, white flowers attached like Christmas lights.

Yellow highlight | Page: 44
On a loud orange trumpet vine flower, a swallowtail’s blue wings open and close in slow applause.

Yellow highlight | Page: 44
near cross beams dirt dauber nests, the orange tunnels rising like cathedral pipes.

Yellow highlight | Page: 71
Chkkk chkkk. A red-winged blackbird saying away from me keep, away from me keep as he commandeers a cattail masthead, ebony coat blazoned with red epaulets fringed white.

Yellow highlight | Page: 88
The sun at my back casts my shadow upstream. It touches the before of what I feel passing, like a memory of something that hasn’t yet happened.

Yellow highlight | Page: 104
mown hay field appears, its blond stubble blackened by a flock of starlings. As I pass, the field seems to lift, peek to see what’s under itself, then resettle. A pickup passes from the other direction. The flock lifts again and this time keeps rising, a narrowing swirl as if sucked through a pipe and then an unfurl of rhythm sudden sprung, becoming one entity as it wrinkles, smooths out, drifts down like a snapped bedsheet. Then swerves and shifts, gathers and twists.

Yellow highlight | Page: 108
or I’d look up and find the stars tacked to the sky where they always were, only the moon roaming.

Yellow highlight | Page: 195
The apple wood sprouts feathers of redyellowgreen, as if the lost parrot has phoenixed among the flames.

Yellow highlight | Page: 213
Imprismed.

Yellow highlight | Page: 213
Morning’s fawnlight yokes inside dew beads, each hued like a rainbow’s hatchling. But they cling like tears about to fall.

David Sparks

I retired in 2005 after 40 years of research and teaching at the University of Alabama in Birmingham (24 years), the University of Pennsylvania (8 years) and the Baylor College of Medicine (8 years). Photography is my retirement hobby.

Nature photography, especially bird photography, combines a number of things that I really enjoy: bird-watching, being outdoors, photography, travel, messing about with computers, and learning new skills and concepts.  I now spend much of my time engaged in these activities.

David Sibley in the preface to The Sibley Guide to Birds wrote "Birds are beautiful, in spectacular as well as subtle ways; their colors, shapes, actions, and sounds are among the most aesthetically pleasing in nature."  My goal is to acquire images that capture the beauty and uniqueness of selected species as well as images that highlight the engaging behaviors the birds exhibit.