Falling Into Winter ...

“November comes And November goes

With the last red berries and the first white snows.

With night coming early,

And dawn coming late,

And ice in the bucket

And frost by the gate.

The fires burn

And the kettles sing,

And earth to sinks to rest

Until next spring.”

        ~ “November Comes and November Goes”

            ~ Elizabeth Coatsworth

                 ~ 1893-1986

           ~ Winner of the Newberry Medal, 1931

Autumn meets winter as fall foliage reflects in the path wetted by melted snow on the afternoon of November 16, 2018 – a day after the season’s first snowfall – at Trexler Memorial Park, Allentown, Pennsylvania. The pre-Thanksgiving snowfall blanketed the region with eight inches of snow.

And Autumn Comes ...

“Summer ends, and autumn comes, and he who would have it otherwise would have high tide always and a full moon every night.”

                        ~ Hal Borland

                         ~ 1900-1978

     ~American author, journalist and naturalist

The looming sunset of a late October day reflects the poetic beauty of autumn in the Bushkill Creek in Henry’s Woods 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.

Shoot The Moon ...

“The summer days are gone too soon

You shoot the moon

And miss completely

And now you’re left to face the gloom

The empty room that once smelled sweetly

Of all the flowers you plucked if only

You knew the reason

Why you had to each be lonely

Was it just the season?

Now the fall is here again

You can’t begin to give in

It’s all over

When the snows come rolling through

You’re rolling too with some new lover

Will you think of times you’ve told me

That you knew the reason

Why we had to each be lonely

It was just the season”

   ~ “Shoot The Moon”

  ~ written by Jesse Harris

 ~recorded by Norah Jones

            ~ 2002

~ The track was part of “Come Away With Me,” Jones’ first full-length album that received Grammy Awards for Album of the Year and Best Pop Vocal Album, and reached the top of the Billboard 200 chart and several jazz charts.

The moon rises over the Kittatinny Ridge on a warm and beautiful last full weekend of summer, my most favorite of seasons, on a September evening along the Delaware and Lehigh National Heritage Corridor (D&L Trail) at Lehigh Gap.

Yes, the summer days are gone too soon!

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 Delaware 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.