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| 9 inches of fresh snow for Christmas, Dry Creek 2015. |
I haven't posted one of these in a while. My illness made it difficult to get around Dry Creek to take pictures. I haven't been down by the cabin since last spring, and I haven't been down in the main canyon for more than a year. Our 90 acres, from my perspective, shrank considerably, to mainly the field. However, even the view from the living room window is pretty spectacular, and I pull up to wild turkey and deer after work on a daily basis, so I shouldn't complain.
Anyway, it's two days after Christmas, the sun is shining bright on a healthy blanket of snow, clumps of snow nestled in the gnarled arms of the oaks out front. Christmas was amazing. It snowed pretty much the entire day. Yesterday, I went out to get some firewood and extended my knee, collapsing to the ground in the old pig shed beside the ATV. It hurt something awful--and still does--but you can't get too down when the air is that soft alpine blue--deep and vibrant when you look up, but frosted towards the horizons with tints of lavender, the smudgy sky almost the color of snow where it meets the land. Amazing.
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| The old pig shed from across the field, 2006, before our house was built. It's amazing how much the pines have grown in that time. |
I love the bitter-sharp air, the intense light, the soft silence around. It brings me "Nearer My God to Thee."
It's not like I'm always aware of that. I certainly wasn't yesterday, collapsed on the ground beside the ATV. I thought "Oh crap," and lets be honest, some other choice phrases as I hobbled back to the house in pain, but I was also aware of how freaking glorious it was outside.
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| These are the same small pines you see in the 2006 photo above. |
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| This one wasn't even visible in 2006; it was small enough to be buried. |
According to Wikipedia, the lyrics were written by the English poet Sara Adams in 1841 at her home in Sunnybank, Loughton, England.
Loughton seems like the perfect parish for such a song to arrive: pastoral, with deep roots. The earliest structure is from 500 B.C. The town of Loughton itself remained small until the early 17th Century when a new road made it an important stop on the way to London, and with the new wealth came the great houses of the rich, such as Loughton Hall, which was once owned by Mary Tudor before she became Queen Mary of England. The house also received important guest like Ben Johnson.
Even today, located next to the famed Epping forest, which has long attracted and inspired artists and writers with its beauty, the area--at least from the internet--seems like the perfect place for such a song to be composed.
The verse was first put to music by Adams' sister, composer, Eliza Flower, but the version we know best in the United States (as well as most of the world) is sang to the tune "Bethany" by Lowell Mason, which was composed in 1856.
I've included three renditions, the first by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, the second by Anna Weatherup, and the third by BYU Men's Chorus.
Enjoy.
