MEMOIR
Eclipses, Awe, and the Daring Drive to Lake Ontario
A father and son’s first total solar eclipse
Driving toward Lake Ontario from our small Pennsylvania suburb in anticipation of the total solar eclipse, my father and I had our reasons for caution. With the country calling for a national emergency and every news station from MSNBC to Fox News stoking fears of endless lines of traffic, the journey before us looked like an undertaking.
But I was cynical of some of the warnings. I reasoned that, although the demand for front-row seats at the event was high, the stadium in which it could be clearly viewed was one whose surface area spanned entire states. Although there were thousands rushing in from out of state, and even out of country, to see the spectacle as clearly as sun-safe spectacles would allow, the area was diffuse.
After all, by some estimates, humanity could feasibly be condensed into a single city if we only built a tall and wide enough building.
By more… creative… imaginings, the blended composite of all people would amount to little more than a ball of goo a kilometer wide. And if the fleshy — theoretical — emulsified mound of all humans is small enough to roll through my hometown without crushing my high school, I figured that every umbraphile in the…
