The Road Home ...

“Tell me where is the road

I can call my own 

That I left, that I lost

So long ago?

All these years I have wandered

Oh, when will I know

There’s a way, there’s a road

That will lead me home?

After wind, after rain,

When the dark is done

As I wake from a dream

In the gold of day,

Through the air there’s a calling

From far away,

There’s a voice I can hear

That will lead me home.

Rise up, follow me,

Come away, is the call,

With the love in your heart

As the only song.

There is no such beauty

As where you belong

Rise up, follow me,

I will lead you home.”

  ~ “The Road Home”

“In the Spring of 2001 I received a commission from the Dale Warland Singers to write a short “folk” type choral arrangement. I had discovered a tune in a folk song book called “The Lone Wild Bird.”I fell in love with it, made a short recording and asked my good friend and colleague, Michael Dennis Browne to write new words for this tune. The tune is taken from “The Southern Harmony Songbook” of 1835. It is pentatonic and that is part of its attraction. Pentatonic scales have been extant for centuries and are prevalent in almost all musical cultures throughout the world. They are universal. Michael crafted three verses and gave it the title “The Road Home." He writes so eloquently about “returning” and “coming home” after being lost or wandering. Again, this is another universal theme and it has resonated well with choirs around the world as this simple little a cappella choral piece has become another “best seller” in our Paulus Publications catalogue and now threatens to catch up with “Pilgrims’ Hymn.” It is just more evidence that often the most powerful and beautiful message is often a simple one.”

  ~ Stephen Paulus, composer

   ~ 1949-2014

A house atop the Kittatinny Ridge can be seen in the distance from the Lehigh and New England (LNE) Trail on the other side of the ridge on an early February afternoon at Lehigh Gap.

I presented the image in sepia to enhance a nostalgic mood.

The Bobolink Trail connects the Delaware and Lehigh National Heritage Corridor (D&LTrail) with the LNE Trail about 1.2 miles north and west of the Osprey House at Lehigh Gap Nature Center. It is named for the Bobolink, a representative of the migrant grassland bird species that Lehigh Gap Nature Center hopes to attract to the refuge’s re-vegetated prairie grasslands. 

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 D&L Trail and the Appalachian Trail.

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

The Guitar Man ...

“Who draws the crowd and plays so loud, baby it’s the guitar man

Who’s gonna steal the show you know baby, it’s the guitar man

He can make you love, he can make you cry

He will bring you down and he’ll get you high

Somethin’ keeps him goin’ miles and miles a day

To find another place to play

Night after night, who treats you right, baby, it’s the guitar man

Who’s on the radio, you go and listen to the guitar man

Then he comes to town and you see his face

And you think you might like to take his place

Somethin’ keeps him driftin’ miles and miles away

Searching for the songs to play

Then you listen to the music and you like to sing along

You want to get the meaning out of each and every song

Then you find yourself a message and some words to call your own and take 'em home

He can make you love, he can get you high

He will bring you down, then he’ll make you cry

Somethin’ keeps him movin’ but no one seems to know 

What it is that makes him go

Then the light begin to flicker and the sound is getting dim

The voice begins to falter and the crowds are getting thin

But he never seems to notice, he’s just got to find another place to play

Fade away

Got to play

Fade away

Got to play”

                   ~ “The Guitar Man”

                     ~ “Bread”

                           ~1972

                      ~ written by David Gates

 The Guitar Man strums the chords and sings his songs in front of the Historic Bethlehem Visitor Center in this infrared street capture I shot on a late November afternoon in downtown historic Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.