Whitetail Winterlude ...

“Nature is not a place to visit. It is home.”

              ~ Gary Snyder

              ~ born 1930

         ~ Pulitzer Prize winner for Poetry, 1975

My favorite white-tailed deer doe, at right, and her fawn – now almost a yearling – pose for a mother-daughter winter portrait on a February evening at home in the park.

I’ve been blessed to photograph this doe and her fawns since 2012, and it’s a true joy to me personally and as a photographer.

Frozen In Harmony ...

“Music comes from an icicle as it melts, to live again as spring water.”

                    ~ Henry Williamson

                         ~ 1895-1977

            ~ English army officer, naturalist,

                  farmer & ruralist writer

Cascading waters above the Bushkill Creek are frozen in harmony with later winter beauty on a sunlit, early March afternoon at Jacobsburg State Park, which spans between Wind Gap and Nazareth, Pennsylvania.

Jacobsburg offers environmental education programs from the preschool environmental awareness programs to high school level environmental problem solving programs, historical programs, teacher workshops and public interpretive programs. Once the site where the famous Henry Rifle was made, the Jacobsburg National Historic District lies almost entirely within the park. Henry’s Woods offers very scenic hikes and the rest of the center grounds have multi-use trails.

The park surrounds the Bushkill Creek.

The original land for the center was purchased by the Department of Forests and Waters from the City of Easton in 1959. In 1969, additional land was purchased using funds from Project 70. This brought the total land area of the center to its present size of 1,168 acres.

Just Dandy ...

“Butterflies … flowers that fly and all but sing.”

       ~ Robert Frost

            ~ 1874-1963

         ~ Four Time Pulitzer Prize Winner

A white butterfly alights on a dandelion on a beautiful – and dandy – April afternoon along the Delaware and Lehigh National Heritage Corridor (D&L Trail) at Lehigh Gap.

In the shadow of the Kittatinny Ridge, also called Blue Mountain, 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.