Fording Winter ...

“How many lessons of faith and beauty should we lose, if there were no winter in our year!”

               ~ Thomas Wentworth Higginson

                      ~ 1823-1911

                  ~from “April Days”

                         ~ 1861

A vehicle crosses the icy waters at the Ford of the Jordan Creek, one of my very favorite places to be and to photograph, at Trexler Nature Preserve, Schnecksville, Pennsylvania.

I shot this frosty scene as the light of the looming sunset waltzes on the icy waters soon after the historic January Blizzard of 2016. In a winter shorn of snow until the blizzard, the storm plonked 31 inches of snow on nearby Allentown in a 24 hour period.

 For more than 50 years visitors have enjoyed driving through the Jordan Creek. Kids and kids at heart cite “Crossing the Water” as one of their fondest memories.

 

Let Me Call You Sweetheart ...

 

… “Let me call you “sweetheart,” I’m in love with you

Let me hear you whisper that you love me too

Keep the love-light glowing in your eyes so true

Let me call you “sweetheart,” I’m in love with you …”

      ~ “Let Me Call You Sweetheart”

    ~ popular song published in 1910

  ~ music by Leo Friedman & lyrics by Beth Slater Whitson

    ~recorded by artists including Bing Crosby, The Mills Brothers, Pat Boone, Patti Page, Fats Domino & Slim Whitman

Bleeding hearts bring thoughts of love in bloom on a mid-April evening in spring along the Ironton Rail Trail, which loops more than nine miles through Whitehall Township, the Borough of Coplay and North Whitehall Township, Pennsylvania.

Bleeding hearts are shade-loving woodland plants that bloom in the cool of spring. Although they stay in bloom for several weeks, the plants often become ephemeral, disappearing for the rest of the summer if exposed to too much sun or heat. The roots are still alive, though, and the plant will regrow in the fall or the following spring. The fringed-leaf varieties of bleeding heart repeat-bloom throughout the summer.

 

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 20^th 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.