An Early Fall ...

“And all at once, summer collapsed into fall.”

                                   ~ Oscar Wilde

                                          ~ 1854-1900

Beautiful goldenrod sways in the gentle late August breeze, a sure sign of an early fall along the Delaware and Lehigh National Heritage Corridor (D&L Trail) at Lehigh Gap on a waning summer afternoon.

In the shadow of the Kittatinny Ridge, also called Blue Mountain, the Lehigh Gap in Slatington, Pennsylvania, is a crossroads where the Lehigh Gap Nature Center’s trails connect two historic trails – the Appalachian Trail and the D&L Trail. 

The Appalachian Trail, a foot path, follows the ridge on both sides of the Lehigh Gap, running 1,245 miles south to Georgia and 930 miles north to Maine. Running from Wilkes-Barre to Bristol, the D&L Trail passes through the Lehigh and Delaware rivers and their canals in Pennsylvania.

Goldenrod is the state flower of Kentucky (adopted 1926) and Nebraska (adopted 1895) and was recently named the state wildflower of South Carolina.

Blue Meets Gold

"Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul." ~ John Muir

Goldenrod reaches for the waning summer sky today at Trexler Memorial Park, Allentown, Pennsylvania.