There are only nine prints left of “The Blue Heron” photograph I took last week, we set a cap of 50 on this signed and Limited Edition series. If you wish to buy it, you can e-mail Maria at [email protected], she is selling this photos and some smaller versions of others at our October Open House. We planned to sell most of these at the Open House, but It looks as if there won’t be any of this series left then, I am humbled and surprised and pleased.

It is a wonderful thing to take a photograph that touches people so much they wish to hang it on their wills. That is an indescribable feeling of pride and accomplishment. I thank you.

I did not realize when I took the photo of the Great Blue Heron, now living in our pond that this bird was such a powerful symbol of independence and purpose and creativity. Many independent and creative people call themselves heron people. I guess I am one of those now as well.

Yesterday, I was reading, or re-reading Wendell Berry’s wonderful book about agrarian life, “The Art Of The Commonplace,” I had the vaguest memory of having read something in it about the heron, and I came across it quite quickly, on page 10.

Berry inspires me and he spoke right from my heart as well as his:

“But there is not only peacefulness, there is joy. And the joy, less deniable in its evidence than the peacefulness, is the confirmation of it. I sat one summer evening and watched a great blue heron make his descent from the top the hill into the valley. He came down at a measured deliberate pace, stately as always, like a dignitary going down a stair. And then, at a point I judged to be midway over the river,  without at all varying his wing beat, he did a backward turn in the air, a loop-do-loop. It could only have been a  gesture of pure exuberance, of joy – a speaking of his sense of the evening, the day’s fulfillment, his descent homeward. He made just the one slow turn, and then flew on out of sight in the direction of a slew farther down in the bottom. The movement was incredibly beautiful, at once exultant and stately, a benediction on the evening and on the river and on me. It seemed so perfectly to confirm the presence of a free nonhuman joy in the world – a joy I feel a great need to believe in – that I had the skeptic’s impulse to doubt that i had seen it. If I had, I thought, it would be a sign of the presence of something heavenly in the earth. And then, one evening a year later, I saw it again.”

– Wendell Berry.

Heron do not need a lot of herons – or people – in their lives.  They are solitary free spirits. I am learning something new about them every day.

They only time they gather in colonies is during the breeding season.  They stand out in their uniqueness and they know how to snatch and take advantage of things and events that most people do not bother with. The Great Blue Heron is considered the king of the marsh. The long thin legs are a  reminder that you don’t need massive pillars to remain stable, but that you must stand on your own.

I am beginning to understand why the Blue Heron came to our pond, and stood still long enough for me to take his photograph, and why so many people want to own it. There are only eight or nine of these prints left, and we don’t plan to make any more, it is a limited edition.

You can order it by e-mailing Maria a [email protected].