Photo Maria Wulf. Who else?

When I saw a grasshopper outside my window, I tapped on the glass to get it to go away. Maria had a grasshopper visit her in her studio today, and she came into my study beaming with pride for taking this photo, which I must admit is lovely.

It seems they had a stareoff, and Maria won in the end. But not before she got her Iphone out and got this picture.

I asked permission to put it on my blog, and she said sure. I know she gets annoyed when I don’t credit her. I sometimes forget.

I think this photo could only have been taken by Maria, an animal and nature mystic who often communicates with mushrooms, ravens, bugs, plants, flowers, and owls (a bobcat as well.) Perhaps she is a pagan elf.

Her love of nature is pure and absolute; she sees things every day that I would never see or notice, and she brings them to me like a proud Labrador, bringing me a bone. She loves nature and sharing it, and over our marital years, she has forced my eyes and spirit open to the wonder of a grasshopper sitting on a window will.

Her love of life is infectious; it forever revives this aging man and keeps his eyes open to life.

Maria has learned the photographer’s trick of getting her portraits to pose in front of some color or bright background. I don’t know how she got the grasshopper to do it.

I had no idea what Maria was like when I fell in love with her nearly 15 years ago.  I knew she was special, but I really had no idea how special she was and is.

She has blossomed in life with her art, love of nature, poetry, videography, writing, art, and photography. Oh yes, and animal lover and caretaker and steward. I am in awe and wonder at her passion for living.

I don’t know that I’ve met anyone in life who is talented by so many things and blessed by so many skills.

I suppose it’s a blessing that she has absolutely no idea how gifted she is or how unusual it is to take to a grasshopper, get into a staredown, and bring the photo to me, a native-born city lug,  with great pride. She is humble as a field mouse, not a gene of arrogance or boast.

I have come to cherish the stories Maria brings me from the woods, the pasture, the corral, the animals, and even the water tank, where she runs a daily EMS for bugs drowning in the water. She always has a story for me.  Sometimes, it overwhelms me; mostly, it amazes me. I can’t really keep up.

Her life is incomplete without nature (or without a cat), a morning meditation with our donkeys, a walking in the woods, a picture of mushrooms and trees, or an owl up in a tree.

I would never think of taking this photograph of a grasshopper, yet I love the picture and can’t stop looking at it. There is something in his eyes that Maria saw but that I didn’t, at least not right away. He has something to say.

Maria often accuses me of not paying close attention to her many encounters, discoveries, and observations. That isn’t true. Sometimes, she wears me down. And sometimes, like today, she wakes me up. I just don’t have her reservoir of enthusiasm; I was taught to be reserved.

Life is a feast in Marialan; my eyes are opening every day to the wonder of the world, which Maria captures in her art and sees in her own life. It’s a world of love and wonder. Most people wander through life without seeing the world around them.

I was one of them, and I never knew when I married her that she would open my eyes to the world around us, sometimes more than I wanted to hear. (like the beaver’s genital sacs story).

I wanted to share the grasshopper photo to me. We live on a modest 17-acre farm in agricultural country, but living with her is a vast and natural wonderland. I call it Marialand.