Streaming Summer Afternoon ...

“Summer afternoon, summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.”

               ~ Henry James

                    ~ 1843-1916

The poetic beauty of an afternoon in summer, my most favorite of seasons, streams through an August day in Henry’s Woods at Jacobsburg State Park, which spans between Wind Gap and Nazareth, Pennsylvania.

Jacobsburg 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.

Once the site where the famous Henry Rifle was made, the Jacobsburg National Historic District lies almost entirely within the park. Henry’s Woods offers very scenic hikes and the rest of the center grounds have multi-use trails.

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.

The Four Musketeers ...

“My heart is like a singing bird.”

                     ~ Christina Rossetti

                                ~ 1830-1894

Four precious young barn swallows peek over their nest in a barn at Lehigh Parkway, Allentown, Pennsylvania on an August afternoon.

The barn swallow is a bird of open country that normally uses man-made structures to breed. It builds a cup nest from mud pellets in barns or similar structures.

Jersey Bound ...

“… Counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike

They’ve all come to look for America …”

           ~ “America”

            ~ Simon & Garfunkel

                  ~ 1968

Though it’s not the New Jersey Turnpike, cars are headed toward The Garden State as traffic crosses the Delaware River over the historic Northampton Street Bridge, commonly called The Free Bridge, into Phillipsburg, New Jersey from Easton, Pennsylvania on a late spring evening in this high contrast monochrome shot I captured in early June.

The Free Bridge, which spans the two states, was completed in 1896 and survived massive flooding from Hurricane Diane in 1955. It underwent a thorough restoration in 1990 and is one of my very favorite places to photograph.