The golden-yellow leaves of the sugar maple begin their downward glide to the ground. Each tree forms a cover quilted by nature to capture the moisture of the oncoming winter. The constant chattering of the gray squirrels indicates the gathering—a time to prepare for the change of the seasons.****
In this obscure spot in Vermont, in 1805, came a similar change of seasons. Golden maple leaves, yes, but much more. The breezes were blowing in a new awakening. The earth itself and all her inhabitants were about to enter a new season. It was not marked on the calendar or announced in the newspaper, but after centuries of silence from the heavens, when humanity claimed that the Lord had grown quiet, something was about to happen.****
Thirty-year old Lucy Mack Smith was nearing her delivery of a baby boy just a few hundred yards from this line of sugar maples here on Dairy Hill. That baby was Joseph Smith, Jr. and he would be born the day after the longest night of darkness, the day when the light begins to return to the earth.****
This photograph is available as a horizontal landscape (as shown) or as a vertical.
