013Bleak Land

Mine Scenery / Bleak Land

sfp
2/2/2004

Birch trees looking north from McAdoo Heights, PA, March 2002. Typical of the flora seen on the windswept, 2000 foot altitude Spring Mountain Plateau, the birch trees and pin oaks are tough, scrubby and hardy. Typically, the clouds and sky are magnificent. Only now, fifty years after coal mining and one hundred years after attendant lumbering ceased, a proper third or fourth growth is taking hold

The two pictures above are not black and white. They are color photographs. At left is the Beaver Brook Coalbank in January 2002 seen from Rte. 309 heading toward Hazle Village. At right is the Jeanesville Coalbank in February, 2003 seen from the narrow gauge southern portion of the Hazleton "Beltway".

The entire surrounding landscape took on the look of a black and white photo on some days in gray, deep midwinter. There's a Christmas Carol, "In the Bleak Mid Winter", that almost perfectly captures these views in an aural mode.

A similar scene of the Audenreid #4 Stripping shot against a cold late January sunset in 2002.