Heavenly orchard

Being in Canterbury, NH for the Church of the Woods, we couldn't not take a look at Canterbury Shaker Village. Still it felt a little odd to celebrate the now silent community which cleared the forest to make 

their busy, joyful life here for almost two centuries. It's all silent now. The Shakers having been celibate, there are no descendants. Canterbury's last member "passed to the Summer Land" in 1992, where they all may now be in the presence of mystical trees. 

Hannah Cohoon, "The Tree of Life" (1854), Polly Collins, "An Emblem of the Heavenly Sphere" (1854), Polly Collins, "A Tree of Love, A Tree of Life" (1857), in Sharon Duane Koomler, Seen and Received: The Shakers' Private Art (Hancock Shaker Village, 2000)