Whitetails Of A Summer Twilight ...

“If you truly love nature, you will find beauty everywhere.”

          ~ Vincent van Gogh

             ~1853 ~ 1890

It’s always the sweetest sight of summer to see a white-tailed fawn, and to see two together is twice the joy!

I captured this shot of twin white-spotted fawns with their mama doe as a summer twilight falls across Trexler Memorial Park, Allentown, Pennsylvania on a beautiful late July evening.

 

The Fawns Of August ...

 “… I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief …

For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.”

  ~ “The Peace of Wild Things”

 ~ Wendell Berry

 ~ born 1934

 ~ American novelist, poet, environmental activist, cultural critic & farmer

 I came into the peace of wild things when I spotted the sweetest sight of summer ~ two beautiful white-tailed deer fawns, twice the joy of seeing just one! ~ showing affection and enjoying their first summer on an early August evening along the Ironton Rail Trail, which loops more than nine miles through Whitehall Township, the Borough of Coplay and North Whitehall Township, Pennsylvania.

The Ironton Railroad was a shortline railroad in Lehigh County. Originally built in 1861 to haul iron ore and limestone to blast furnaces along the Lehigh River, traffic later shifted to carrying Portland Cement when local iron mining declined in the early 20^th century. Much of the railroad had already been abandoned when it became part of Conrail in 1976, and the last of its trackage was removed in 1984.

In 1996, Whitehall Township purchased 9.2 miles of the right-of-way from Conrail, transforming it into the Ironton Rail Trail.

 

The Fawns At Jacobsburg ...

“One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.”

      ~William Shakespeare

        ~ 1564-1616

I spotted the sweetest sight of summer – beautiful twin white-tailed deer fawns, twice the joy of seeing just one! – enjoying their first summer on a late June afternoon on the grounds of Boulton in Henry’s Woods at Jacobsburg State Park, which spans between Wind Gap and Nazareth, Pennsylvania.

Boulton was 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.

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/.