Taking Over the Sun
It’s finally happening. I’ve been waiting for totality to return for seven years. Here I was on August 21, 2017 in Kelly, Kentucky.
I had driven to St. Louis for the weekend, preparing for the eclipse in 2017. The forecast the night before was looking too cloudy there, so I packed up my hotel and drove several hours pre-dawn down to Kentucky. I discovered the Little Green Men Festival, which through sheer coincidence is held on August 21st every year to celebrate a local alien abduction story. The perfect place to watch the eclipse!
Last fall, through another sheer coincidence, my unplanned road trip took me to Crater Lake in Oregon on the exact day of the annular (not total) solar eclipse. A fun experience, but nothing like totality.
A week later in Yosemite, I met this super sweet elderly couple touring the US parks from New Zealand. We had a wonderful conversation for over an hour, and I learned they had traveled over for the eclipse the week before. She said they visited the US in 2017 for that eclipse, too. So naturally, I told them about the Little Green Men Festival in Kentucky. They were dumbfounded—they were there too! Traveled all the way from New Zealand to absolute nowhere Kentucky. We couldn’t believe we were all in the same place! I wonder where they’ll be tomorrow along the eclipse path. I know they’ll be here again.
Totality is truly unlike anything else. Here's my unedited picture from 2017. Nothing will ever do it justice though. You have to experience totality to believe it. 99.99% coverage isn’t enough.
It’s likely the most dazzling eclipse in the entire universe. Not solar system, not Milky Way. The entire universe. The sun is 400 times larger than the moon but it’s also 400 times further away from us. An absolutely incredible galactic coincidence. And with the moon slowly drifting away, total solar eclipses will end in the future.
On top of all that, the planet with this incredible eclipse has sentient life who understand and appreciate an eclipse. Plus, you and I are the lucky humans to be alive during the short period when eclipses are predictable and we can leave our villages to seek them out. The improbability of it all is just beyond definition to me.
The moment totality began in 2017 was the most awe-inspiring second of my life. I unexpectedly started sobbing, and couldn’t believe the unthinkable wonder of what I was witnessing. The sound in this video is the raw reaction of me, my ex, and the crowd around us. The sun, the thing that gives us all life, had been extinguished.
It was the first time nature had moved me like that, and it has changed me forever. The travel I do, the beauty and wonder I seek out in sunsets, viewpoints, and secluded places—they all stem from my experience in 2017. Totality finally returns tomorrow.
