Climb That Mountain ...

“Because in the end, you won’t remember the time you spent working in the office or mowing your lawn. Climb that … mountain.”

                       ~ Jack Kerouac

                            ~ 1922-1969

While walking on the Delaware and Lehigh National Heritage Corridor (D&L Trail) at Lehigh Gap on a late May evening, I looked across the Lehigh River and spotted this man hiking along the Kittatinny Ridge, also called Blue Mountain.

In the shadow of the Kittatinny Ridge, 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 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.

No Skating ...

“In skating over thin ice our safety is in our speed.”

              ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

                    ~ 1803-1882

A midwinter snowfall cascades around the “No Skating” sign at the pond on a February afternoon at Trexler Memorial Park, Allentown, Pennsylvania.

Whitetails In The Winter Mist ...

“I please myself with the graces of the winter scenery, and believe that we are as much touched by it as by the genial influences of summer.”

                      ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

                                ~ 1803-1882

Four beautiful white-tailed deer does show off their whitetails in the winter mist as a light rain falls in the late afternoon in the park.

Buck In The Falling Snow ...

“… 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

A beautiful four point white-tailed deer buck strikes a majestic pose as a peaceful hush sweeps across the field as a midwinter snowfall begins cascading from the sky in this high contrast monochrome shot I captured in the park in the late afternoon of a February day.