Winter Still ...

“Listen to the silence inside the illusion of the world.”

            ~ Jack Kerouac

              ~ 1922 ~ 1969

 

The Coplay Creek rambles in winter’s silent beauty beside the Ironton Rail Trail on a late February afternoon in Egypt, Pennsylvania, as the season inches toward spring – but it is winter still.

 

The Ironton Rail Trail loops more than nine miles through Whitehall Township, the Borough of Coplay and North Whitehall Township.

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.

 

October Riverscape ...

“There is no season when such pleasant and sunny spots may be lighted on, and produce so pleasant an effect on the feelings, as now in October.”

                   ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

                       ~ 1804 ~ 1864

A man stands on the banks of the Lehigh River and takes in autumn’s beauty as sunshine and temperatures that soared into the 70s fashioned a beautiful October afternoon along the Delaware & Lehigh National Heritage Corridor (D&L Trail).

I captured this shot this after setting out from the Cementon Trailhead of the D&L Trail in Cementon, Pennsylvania, part of the Asher F. Boyer Eagle Trail section of the D&L.

Running from Wilkes-Barre to Bristol, the D&L Trail passes through the Lehigh and Delaware Rivers and their canals in Pennsylvania.

 

Of Pale Yellow Mornings ...

“There are pale yellow mornings, when the mist burns slowly into day, the air stings like autumn …”

            ~ Robert Hass

                 ~ born 1941

       ~ Poet Laureate of the United States

            ~ 1995 ~ 1997

The mist rises poetically soon after sunrise on a brisk and beautiful late October morning near the Ford of the Jordan Creek, one of my very favorite places to be and to photograph at Trexler Nature Preserve, Schnecksville, Pennsylvania.