Dance With The August Moon ...

“Well it’s a marvelous night for a moondance …

Can I just have one more moondance with you, my love? …”

      ~ “Moondance”

       ~ Van Morrison

         ~ 1970

Clouds tinged pink with the color of sunset dance around the moon and sweep down to the landscape in the beautiful surreal.

I shot this first quarter moon and clouds at the moment of sunset on August 15, 2021 on a warm and beautiful evening along the Ironton Rail Trail, which loops more than nine miles through Whitehall Township, the Borough of Coplay and North Whitehall Township, Pennsylvania.

Background texture by Jai Johnson added for artistic effect.

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.