RIVERFRONT PARK, Pa. — When riding the Lehigh River boarding south Bethlehem, the SteelStacks tower above.<\/p>\n
Passing history that moves you forward. A ride where passing history moves you forward. Part of the three-day Lehigh River Sojourn, now in its 30th year.<\/p>\n
Don Harris has made every Sojourn day. He flew up from his home in Florida to not miss this one.<\/p>\n
“It’s emotional for you?” 69 News reporter Bo Koltnow asked.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Absolutely,” he said, while choking up.<\/p>\n
“Why?” Koltnow asked.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“You get an attachment to the river, to the people,” he responded.<\/p>\n
The Sojourn was started 30 years ago by Chris Kocher of Wildlands Conservancy to bring attention to the Lehigh.<\/p>\n
It’s grown from a few paddlers to thousands over the years.<\/p>\n
This includes, now-guide, Kristina Gomez, a 20-plus-year sojourn vet.<\/p>\n
“Biggest difference you noticed from last year to the first year, you did it in 2004?” Koltnow asked.<\/p>\n
“We’re getting people who are just coming out and exploring the river, which is so exciting that we’re getting to introduce the river to more and more people,” she said.<\/p>\n
“30 years ago, when we saw on the river, we knew, we knew them, because it was only us that were out here,” Kocher added.<\/p>\n
Three decades of change with an above and below the surface impact. This, as Kocher stresses, the Lehigh is cleaner now than any point pre-Industrial Revolution.<\/p>\n
“The sojourn was a big part of making sure that people understood this was a destination and a natural resource and a place that they could come for recreation and respite,” Kocher said.<\/p>\n
From river awareness to stewardship.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"RIVERFRONT PARK, Pa. — When riding the Lehigh River boarding south Bethlehem, the SteelStacks tower above. Passing history…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":223531,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[214,153,155,154,1391],"class_list":["post-223530","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-_homepage_top_stories","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news","tag-bethlehem-area"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223530","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=223530"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223530\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/223531"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=223530"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=223530"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=223530"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}