“The soul that sees beauty may sometimes walk alone.”
~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
~ 1749 ~ 1842
Nestled in the milkweed, a majestic yearling ~ a nine-point buck ~ shows off his velvet antlers as a summer twilight falls across Trexler Memorial Park, Allentown, Pennsylvania, on a beautiful late July evening.
“… I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief …
For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.”
~ “The Peace of Wild Things”
~ Wendell Berry
~ born 1934
~ American novelist, poet, environmental activist, cultural critic & farmer
I came into the peace of wild things when I spotted the sweetest sight of summer ~ two beautiful white-tailed deer fawns, twice the joy of seeing just one! ~ showing affection and enjoying their first summer on an early August 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 20th 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.
“The life in us is like the water in a river.”
~ Henry David Thoreau
~ 1817 ~ 1862
~ “Walden”
~ published 1854
Folks enjoy a sun splashed late July afternoon on the Lehigh River along the Delaware & Lehigh National Heritage Corridor (D&L Trail) on a perfect day in summer, my most favorite of seasons.
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.
