Fording Winter ...

“How many lessons of faith and beauty should we lose, if there were no winter in our year!”

               ~ Thomas Wentworth Higginson

                      ~ 1823-1911

                  ~from “April Days”

                         ~ 1861

A vehicle crosses the icy waters at the Ford of the Jordan Creek, one of my very favorite places to be and to photograph, at Trexler Nature Preserve, Schnecksville, Pennsylvania.

I shot this frosty scene as the light of the looming sunset waltzes on the icy waters soon after the historic January Blizzard of 2016. In a winter shorn of snow until the blizzard, the storm plonked 31 inches of snow on nearby Allentown in a 24 hour period.

 For more than 50 years visitors have enjoyed driving through the Jordan Creek. Kids and kids at heart cite “Crossing the Water” as one of their fondest memories.

 

The Barn At Jacobsburg ...

“How many lessons of faith and beauty we should lose if there were no winter in our year!”

           ~ Thomas Wentworth Higginson

                    ~1823-1911

               ~ from “April Days”

                          ~ 1861

A barn nestled in mid-March snow paints a picturesque late winter scene in Henry’s Woods at Jacobsburg State Park, which spans between Wind Gap and Nazareth, Pennsylvania.

The barn is part of Boulton, an early American industrial community in the heart of the Jacobsburg National Historic District – once the site where the famous Henry Rifle was made – which lies almost entirely in the park. Henry’s Woods offers very scenic hikes and the rest of the center grounds have multi-use trails.

The barn was built by William Henry III circa 1821 to house grain and livestock.

Jacobsburg State Park offers environmental education programs from the preschool environmental awareness programs to high school level environmental problem solving programs, historical programs, teacher workshops and public interpretive programs.

The park surrounds the Bushkill Creek.

The original land for the center was purchased by the Department of Forests and Waters from the City of Easton in 1959. In 1969, additional land was purchased using funds from Project 70. This brought the total land area of the center to its present size of 1,168 acres.

For more information on the Henry family visit the Jacobsburg Historical Society’s website at http://www.jacobsburghistory.com/.