Totality
Through the foil lenses of eclipse glasses I watched as the sun’s edges retreated into a thin red sliver and then disappeared completely. I closed my eyes, slid the paper frame from my nose, and looked up at the sky. I could hear myself involuntarily exclaim “Oh Wow!” as sheer exuberance and euphoria buzzed through my body like electricity and shot me to my feet. In the background full-grown men and women whooped and cheered with the enthusiasm of children at Christmas. Behind them, in front of them, in all directions the mountains formed jagged silhouettes against a delicate rose horizon that slowly blended upwards into a serene blue punctuated by the twinkle of Venus and a few of its cosmic companions. I held my wife tightly in my arms, clinging to her like a life vest as we drifted in a celestial sea. I shared the eclipse with my grandparents, their childhood friends, my brother-in-law and his young son, and perfect strangers, all of us brought together by the spectacle of nature. The temperature dropped into a chill as the wind rose accordingly, frogs croaked and crickets chirped in this sudden night. At the center of it all, an angelic silver halo radiated out from a hole in the sky. Then, after what seemed like a drawn-out instant, a bright flash of light emerged from the edge of this heavenly crown and our glasses went back on. In the aftermath, we all stood in awe at the wonder we had just seen.
I have witnessed the majesty of nature. I have seen the Northern Lights dance across the sky in ribbons of purple and green. I have seen the air freeze so cold that the sky turned to ice and the moonlight reflected back and forth between these clouds above and the snow below, illuminating the forest in a soft white light that came from every direction at once yet cast no shadows. I have seen the crashing waves of the Caribbean glow a ghostly green as slicks of algae tumbled in the surf. I have stood in the shadow of trees hundreds of feet tall and thousands of years old, crunched across ancient permafrost, swung from vines in a tropical rainforest, swam with sea turtles, and sailed with dolphins. I have looked down at the world from where the air gets thin in the Cascades, Rockies, Alps, and the edge of the Himalayas. I have seen the sun and moon rise and set in turn over four continents and bathed in the salty waters of four seas.
I have witnessed the savagery of nature. I have been in earthquakes, a blizzard, a hurricane, and watched as the clouds overhead began swirling into a tornado. I have dodged hail the size of golf balls and been surrounded by the booming roar of lightning. I have seen the sky burn red with fire and smoke blot the sun into a rusty ball. I have shivered as the mercury dropped to –45° below with 0 percent humidity and languished as it rose to over 120° above with 100 percent humidity. I have stood atop volcanoes and looked into molten lava and the ash of a shattered mountainside.
I have witnessed the glory of nature at its most peaceful and its most violent. But, of all these experiences, the eclipse of 2017 will be the one that burns brightest in my memory. It was this that most embodied the true meaning of the word “awesome”: that which inspires an overwhelming feeling of pure awe at the boundless wonder of the universe.