Surreal Sunflare Field ...

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

        ~ Jack Kerouac

         ~1922 ~ 1969

A flare of a “mad orange sunset” illuminates a beautiful field in the surreal, where you can listen to the silence inside the illusion of the world.

I created this image by blending my shot “Flares Of A Mad Orange Sunset” with background texture by Jai Johnson for artistic effect.

Sunflares sparked an abstract beauty around a mad orange sunset on July 5, 2021 along the Ironton Rail Trail, which loops more than nine miles through Whitehall Township, the Borough of Coplay and North Whitehall Township, Pennsylvania.

Looking more like the moon than the sun and shining with a wild beauty, the sun held court in a hazy, milky sky.

The orange haze in the evening sky was likely the result of wildlife smoke in southern Canada affecting conditions very high in the atmosphere.

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 20^th 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.