2017.08.21 Total Totality

As a family, in the wee hours this morning used the back roads to slink into the thick part of the path of totality for the solar eclipse. On a (briefly) lonely hill with sweeping views east and west, we watch first the sunrise over Mount Hood, and then waited with our NASA-approved ISO 12312-2-compliant sunshades¹ for Luna to overcome Sol.

It was honestly beyond my ability to describe it.

Of course, I'm going to try anyway. It took about an hour after the moon started nibbling into the visible disc of the sun, but the growing anticipation was continually palpable. It was amazing how much light even 99.9% occlusion still managed to bathe the ground. So we were completely unprepared for the sensation as the full shadow of totality swept over the westward hills and engulfed us. Gingerly pulling the sunshades away to look up... the corona of the sun is a sight I'll never be able to forget. In the exact same way that a camera never quite captures the proportion of large scale scenery, no photo of an eclipse truly does justice to the writhing coronal mass around the black circle. For everyone who has ever seen the Grand Canyon or Zion National Park or Valhalla Provincial park, and can attest that being there is totally different, the eclipse was the same way.

In my personal pantheon of direct experiences in my life, this is sorted well near the top in terms of sheer memorability. It has all the grandeur of spectacular scenery, but also the rarity of space/time celestial alignment.

The cherry on top of the experience was a thick slice of schadenfreude pie. We managed to sneak north along the selfsame backroads through some civilized traffic. After having some lunch and a nap, we heard about some people how had to trawl north on the I5 for five hours. Or longer. Our entire adventure was cleverly engineered and guided by my brilliant wife, and I can't thank her enough for the exquisite memory.

 

 

 

 

¹ The second set we bought. The first ones turned out to be fakes, despite having the certification labelled on them. Amazon pre-emptively reimbursed us, and we found alternates at our local farmer's market. Apparently they were handed out for free at my office last week - but I wasn't there.