Eclipse!!!

So a ordinary minor occurrence known as a total solar eclipse happened yesterday. The second one that I’ve been fortunate enough to witness in my lifetime. If you’ve never seen one, you really should.

If you measured an events status by the level of awesomeness per each second of its length, it’s probably number one ranking-wise, on the charts of possible events that you might observe in a lifetime. At least in my humble opinion. Awesomeness!!! ..... That's not just the feelings solely of scientific nerds and geeks but just about everyone I've talked to.

Thirty minutes before “totality” I put on my eclipse glasses. They didn’t fit too well over my bi-focals but I hadn’t seen anyone selling clip-ons so they had to suffice. Struggling to keep them in place, I glanced at the sky. There was an brilliant orange ball surrounded by the blackest shade of blackness with an increasingly encroaching slice of moonshadow moving in its path. More glances, then suddenly “totality.” I took a naked eye gaze or two before getting busy with my camera. I had read somewhere that a person shouldn’t waste the experience away taking photos. That they should just relax and take it all in its “totality” but damnit, I wanted pictures!! That’s what I live for these days.

In the brief moments of dusk prior to “totality,” the sun and moon produced a semi-eerie color in the atmospheric surroundings that I’ve never seen before. A mix of blue, gray and charcoal that initially had me wondering if I had stared at the sun for too long with faulty spectacles.

Leading up to it all, I was getting a little annoyed by the number of times I heard the word “totality” used but then it happened and suddenly there I was, standing there, at totality loss to utter or write a better word.

Hours earlier, the local shopping center sprawl was packed with cars at 7:00am. Mostly out-of-state eclipse gawkers securing a spot to put down temporary roots and gaze skyward. Almost like a massive visiting team, beer and Bar-B-Q tailgating event. A ton of Washington plates and a fair share of California plates. Had you not been paying attention to the news for the past few weeks, you might have thought that the U of Washington Huskies and USC Trojans were playing a football game at the adjacent minor league baseball stadium. Very few natives there. I wanted to scream at the foreigners to clear way for me to pass by! That this is my sacred home turf!!! And to enjoy our lack of sales tax.

I couldn’t help but think at one point before the actual visual was all so obviously set in motion …. What if they got the slide rule calculations wrong and it was really happening next month? My pessimistic side I suppose.

Outside the main gate of my place of employment is a designated “park and share” carpooling gathering location. While not huge in acreage, it was packed with four or five times the usual amount of cars (and lawn chairs), with more people flocking across the I-5 overpass on foot, like pilgrims making a once-in-a-lifetime visit to a sacred shrine  … but just more tourists securing a prime viewing spot.

….. And I guess for many a total solar eclipse is a once-in-a-lifetime event which is why I feel so lucky to have lived through two of them  …. and to be armed with my eclipse glasses and camera this time around …. Which I didn’t have in 1979.

At the risk of making it a less unique and awesome event, I’d vote to have another one tomorrow.