Mirrored ...

“Faith is the bird that feels the light when the dawn is still dark.”

               ~ Rabindranath Tagore

                  ~ 1861 ~ 1941

 

Perched on the banks of the Coplay Creek, a beautiful male North American Cardinal gazes upon his reflection on an April 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.

 

Early Spring Postcard ...

“Springtime is the land awakening. The March winds are the morning yawn.”

  ~ Lewis Grizzard

   ~ 1946 ~ 1994

 ~ American writer & humorist, known for his Southern demeanor & commentary on the American South.

The feeling of early spring pirouettes on the waters of the Jordan Creek as they spill over Wehr’s Dam, built in 1904, to flow beneath the historic Wehr’s Covered Bridge, creating a picturesque early spring postcard at Wehr’s Covered Bridge Park, Orefield, Pennsylvania.

The wooden covered bridge in South Whitehall Township is a three-span, 117-foot long Burr Truss bridge, constructed in 1841. It has horizontal siding and a gable roof. It crosses the Jordan Creek and was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.

I shot this image in the late afternoon of March 24, 2024, less than a week after spring had once again awakened the land.

 

Snow-Dipped Robin Hood Dell ...

“ … Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,

In the bleak midwinter …”

   “In the Bleak Midwinter”

  ~ Christina Rossetti

    ~ 1830 ~ 1894

 ~ “In the Bleak Midwinter” is a poem by English poet Christina Rossetti, commonly performed as a Christmas carol. The poem was first published under the title “A Christmas Carol” in the January 1872 issue of “Scribner’s Monthly.”

A snow-dipped Robin Hood Dell is dressed up in winter’s beauty in this infrared image as the waters of the Little Lehigh Creek flow beneath the bridge at Lehigh Parkway, Allentown, Pennsylvania on a mid-February afternoon soon after seven inches of snow blanketed the area.