The Sacred Grove is not a shady woodland in April.

Winter is long in upstate New York because of the cooling caused by the water mass of the Great Lakes. This year they froze, so there was no lake effect late in winter, but the melting process has left the air very cold. It is April 25th and the apricots are just now starting to come out. These were the earliest little flowers we found in the Grove, around April 7th, 2008.
The brush turns green before the sap reaches the top of the towering old trees.
Elder James, at 6'4", is dwarfed by this American Beech tree, a "Witness Tree" that would have been alive at the time Joseph Smith had his vision.
Some of the Witness Trees have Department of Agriculture markers verifying their great age. These often cannot be seen in summer as they are covered over with growth.
Looking through the center of the Grove one sees mostly the remnants of last fall's leaves and very little else. This photo was taken April 7th, 2008.
By April 21, the tips of some of the trees were turning green, in contrast to the previous picture.
Undergrowth by April 21st is starting to pop through the dead leaves in a variety of shades of green.
This fallen tree has provided shelter for small animals all during the winter and will shelter others during the summer. Fungi and lichen are starting to grow again in the wood. When the grove was "groomed" and all downed timber was removed, there was very little wildlife. The new forest management plan has made it a welcome habitat for many birds and animals.
One tree in the field that once was the bus parking lot has green on the tip of every branch. Spring is coming at last! But of course, if there are no leaves there is little shade, so the poetic license taken by the composer of "Joseph Smith's First Prayer" doesn't mesh with the reality of April in Palmyra. However, in any season the Grove is a special place to walk and meditate.

An Ice Storm is photogenic, but don't walk in one!

As it was getting dark, rain above a layer of cold air turned to ice as it came down through the freezing air temperature and coated the grass outside the Hill Cumorah Visitors Center.
The floodlighting at the Whitmer Farm caught the gloss of the ice on every twig and branch. As soon as we got off the main roads which had been salted, the roads were also a skating rink.
This particular storm coated things heavily enough to break large limbs and bring down wires. This is a close-up of shrubbery in our yard the next morning.
The view looking east into the rising sun made the trees glisten. No Christmas decorations artist can begin to do lighting like nature does if there has been an ice storm. However, you should stand still to see it, as what you are walking on is slick and difficult.
Another view of the trees in their winter coating of ice. Where Aunkst Road joins State Route 96, a car slid through the intersection just about the time I took this photo, jumped a sizeable drainage ditch, and knocked an electrical pole down across the road, blocking traffic into Waterloo for half a day. Many people were without power because of this storm, and there were more accidents than law enforcement could respond to. In the west we seldom get storms like this, but the Great Lakes area is quite prone to them. It was fun to try photographing things from a variety of angles. But next winter will be soon enough to have another one of these.