Emily and I trod out into a snow-covered clear cut in Northwestern Maine, with hardly a cloud in the sky and the sun bright overhead. It was warm despite the snow, perhaps 55 degrees at that time. We'd come to this place for a very specific reason, and for once it wasn't fish or snakes that had gotten me to Maine. We were two of many in fact. People of all walks of life had driven to a strip of Northern New England to watch a quirk of astronomy that has been stunning earthlings for as long as there've been such critters scrambling around the surface of this planet. We had all come here for the solar eclipse.
I've been captivated by the world in a very absolute way as long as I can remember, from microorganisms to such cosmic displays. I'm drawn to see and experience as much as I can while I'm here. That all consuming need to be wherever something huge, powerful, and awe inspiring is what drives my storm chasing. The feeling of being in front of the updraft of a supercell or braced against the wind of a landfalling hurricane isn't easily described, but I know I need it like I need water, food, and sleep. I can't stand when I miss a tornado within 10 hours of home. The idea of missing the eclipse was similar, if not more so considering how easily predicted they are. But I must say, my excitement was tempered a little. Not knowing what to expect was the tricky thing. How many people would there be? Would there be an immense traffic jam that would stop us from getting there? would it actually live up to the hype?
But that had all settled when we found that clear cut. There were two other small groups, each a hundred yards or more away, so we more or less had a spot to ourselves. The view was tremendous, and the clean snow would make a canvas for a mysterious phenomena known as shadow bands to dance across. We laid down a blanket and made a snowman to where an extra pair of glasses, then settled in to watch as the moon slowly began to traverse the face of the sun.
Shadows on the ground soon began to take a crescent like shape, mirroring the shadow being cast by the moon. The light began to take a more and more bizarre quality. Though every morning the sun is shadowed the same amount as it rises and sets, the way that light looks is so familiar. It's refracted by the atmosphere in just such a way, coming from just such an angle. Coming from almost over head its something else entirely. Then, as totality approached, shadow bands wavered across the snow. And in moments it was nighttime, if only for a few minutes.
It's pretty easy to understand why people without the knowledge of the earth's orbit around the sun and the moon's orbit around earth though the world might be ending for just a moment, then chalk the event up to a higher power's wrath, or even a warning. It was astonishingly surreal and breathtaking, more so than I'd anticipated. It moved me nearly to tears.
I'll be 47 the next time an eclipse's path of totality will cross the contiguous United States. There's not much that could stop me from being there to see it happen again. It's very much one of those things that must be seen at least once, and to me left a need to fulfill that same feeling the next time the opportunity arises. Like seeing a humpback whale breach. Or flipping a rock and seeing the vibrance of a smooth green snake underneath. Or looking up into the heart of a massive, rotating thunderstorm that could at any moment touch the earth with the ferocity to kill and destroy. When people don't feel a raw and intense emotion from such experiences, I don't understand that. When they do, to the point of taking off time from work, getting friends and family in the car gathering in a place far from home all to see the same natural spectacle, it makes much more sense. And in some ways it's almost as beautiful as the spectacle itself.
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