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.

 

Moon Dip On A Carolina Shore ...

“I stood face to face with the moon and the ocean and the future that spread out with all its bewildering immensity before me.”

   ~ Pat Conroy

    ~ 1945-2016

Footprints in the sand lead up to the Strawberry Moon dipping into the Atlantic Ocean at the edge of the shore in the surreal, surely seen by the man who left his footprints after coming face to face with the moon and the ocean and the future that spread out with all its bewildering immensity before him.

I created this image by blending my monochrome shot of Folly Field Beach Park, Hilton Head Island in the Lowcountry of South Carolina on a beautiful late October morning in 2018 with my shot of the Super Strawberry Moon holding court in the sky over the West End of Allentown, Pennsylvania in the Lehigh Valley at 10:33 p.m. June 24, 2021.

 

This Super Strawberry Moon is the last near-Supermoon of 2021. According to the Old Farmer’s Almanac, the name “Strawberry Moon” originated with Algonquin tribes in eastern North America, who knew the June full moon as a signal to gather ripening fruit of wild strawberries.

 

This Super Strawberry Moon rose just before 9 p.m. in the Lehigh Valley, about a half-hour passed sunset. It is the first full moon of summer 2021.

 

 

 

Surreal Wildfire Sunset ...

 “… Goodness gracious, great balls of fire …”

       ~ “Great Balls Of Fire”

     ~ 1957 popular song recorded at Sun Records, Memphis, Tennessee by Jerry Lee Lewis ~ born 1935 

Sun Records is an American independent record label founded by producer Sam Phillips in Memphis in February 1952. Sun was the first label to record the great Elvis Presley as well as Charlie Rich, Roy Orbison, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, and Johnny Cash.

Great Balls Of Fire it’s a sunset Jerry Lee Lewis would love as a red sun sets in a beautiful field in the surreal.

I created this image by blending my shot of the hazy red sunset of July 20, 2021 at Trexler Memorial Park, Allentown, Pennsylvania, with background texture by Jai Johnson for artistic effect.

The wildfire smoke in southern Canada affected conditions very high in the atmosphere and caused the hot milky skies and orange haze in the evening sky that caused sunsets such as this.