Thursday, February 8, 2024

A Spoonful of Love ...

“If you want to go quickly, go alone, if you want to go far, go together.”

        ~ African Proverb

 

A beautiful white-tailed deer doe exchanges a spoonful of love nuzzling with one of her sweet white-spotted fawns during a precious moment I captured in the waning summer on an early September evening at Trexler Memorial Park, Allentown, Pennsylvania … a honey of a summer sight!


 

Wednesday, January 31, 2024

Buttons Wears His Velvet ...

“Any glimpse into the life of an animal quickens our own and makes it so much the larger and better in every way.”

             ~ John Muir

                  ~ 1838 ~1914

My favorite yearling ~ Buttons, as I call him ~ shows off his velvet as the eight point buck enjoys a beautiful summer evening in August at Trexler Memorial Park, Allentown, Pennsylvania.

I began photographing Buttons as a precious white-spotted fawn, then a sweet button buck and then a beautiful yearling, until he migrated away in January 2020. Along the way I tossed him many apples, which he loved eating. It’s a true joy and blessing to me personally and as a photographer to have watched this white-tailed deer grow.


 

Friday, January 19, 2024

Winter Still ...

“Listen to the silence inside the illusion of the world.”

            ~ Jack Kerouac

              ~ 1922 ~ 1969

 

The Coplay Creek rambles in winter’s silent beauty beside the Ironton Rail Trail on a late February afternoon in Egypt, Pennsylvania, as the season inches toward spring – but it is winter still.

 

The Ironton Rail Trail loops more than nine miles through Whitehall Township, the Borough of Coplay and North Whitehall Township.

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.