“Well, I know now. I know a little more how much a simple thing like a snowfall can mean to a person.”
~ Sylvia Plath
~ 1932-1963
~ “The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath”
~ published 1982
The landscape glistens with winter’s beauty after a fresh February snowfall has blanketed it with a silver frosting at Trexler Memorial Park, Allentown, Pennsylvania.
“All good things are wild and free.”
~ Henry David Thoreau
~ 1817-1862
The elk take a winter’s nap in the snow on a beautiful early March afternoon at Trexler Nature
Preserve, Schnecksville, Pennsylvania.
The elk live as a herd on the hillsides of the 1,100-acre preserve’s Central Range.
When the late General Harry Clay Trexler established the preserve in the early 1900s, he did it to save the American bison, elk and white-tailed deer from extinction and assure the species’ survival.
A conservationist along the lines of Theodore Roosevelt and John Muir, General Trexler understood the importance of nature and preserving wildlife in its natural habitat.
A successful businessman who amassed a fortune in the timber and cement industries and founded the Pennsylvania Power and Light Company, General Trexler began purchasing small farms in the low hills of Lehigh County in 1906. By 1913, he had transported eight bison and 20 Virginia white-tailed deer to the preserve. The elk followed soon after.
When General Trexler died in 1933, he bequeathed the property to the residents of Lehigh County. Today, the Trexler Nature Preserve is open to the public for passive recreation and nature watching.
“I felt like lying down by the side of the trail and remembering it all …”
~ Jack Kerouac
~ 1922-1969
A
railroad signal from yesteryear adds a pop of color to the mid-winter landscape
in this painterly, HDR image I shot on a February afternoon as sunset loomed along the Saucon
Rail Trail, Hellertown, Pennsylvania, when my train of thought turned to the coming spring.
~Henry David Thoreau
~ 1817-1862
The Lehigh Gap Bridge spans a frozen Lehigh River as the light of a looming late January sunset reflects in the icy waters and shadow dances on the Kittatinny Ridge, also called Blue Mountain, at Lehigh Gap in this painterly, HDR image.
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 Delaware and Lehigh Heritage Corridor Trail (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.
The Lehigh Gap Bridge was built in 1930 and rehabilitated in 1984.
“For how can one know color in perpetual green, and what good is warmth without cold to give it sweetness?”
~ John Steinbeck
~ 1902-1968
The Springhouse is nestled in winter’s beauty at the start of a late January snowfall in this painterly, HDR image I captured as twilight fell upon Trexler Memorial Park, Allentown, Pennsylvania.
The log cabin was part of Springhouse, the summer home of General Harry Clay Trexler (1854-1933), an American industrialist who built a business empire in Allentown. The park is his namesake.
