Nows and Forevers

Last weekend began the one-year countdown to the total solar eclipse that will be seen in a large part of the United States and Canada on April 8, 2024.

I can’t wait. You could say I’ve been waiting since the last one in the U.S., in August 2017. Because I have.

I’m an unabashed total solar eclipse geek. I’ve only seen one total eclipse, that one nearly six years ago now. But it was so spectacular that I wished I had spent my entire life up to that point going to remote parts of the world, chasing eclipses.

It was that incredible.

I had never been near a total solar eclipse before. I wasn’t even back in 2017. I drove about six hours from my home to go to Bowling Green, Kentucky, where my father and I experienced totality. It was only about a minute of totality, but it was enough to hook me.

“I can’t wait to do that again,” I told my father. He was game for the trip but didn’t really ever think about eclipses, was impressed.

Total solar eclipses only come around once every 18 months somewhere in the world, so they’re rare. With the Earth 2/3 water, living in the path of totality is even rarer.

The closest I’ve ever come was on May 10, 1994, when there was an annular solar eclipse in northern New York and northern New England. I had to work that day so I couldn’t travel — darn news biz — but my newsroom colleagues and I built pinhole cameras to safely observe the 85% obscurity above us in Bridgeport, Connecticut.

And I got to take my lunch half-hour at the maximum, shortly after 1:30 p.m. that day. I will never forget the otherworldly glow and shadows of the sun falling on downtown Bridgeport. But it in no way got dark.

It would be 23 years before I finally saw a total solar eclipse, and there was no comparison between 1994 and 2017. It was a hot day in Bowling Green, where my father and I had gone to a minor league baseball game. But gradually the sun dimmed and it got cooler, and then, around 2 p.m., the sky darkened to near twilight and the sun basically disappeared.

Looking up at that eclipse, seeing the small strands of sunlight up against the mountains of the Moon – called Baily’s Beads – I had no words. I just knew that I needed to see it again.

I’m lucky in 2024. Totality is about two hours either north or west of where I live, and I’m able to easily reach Cleveland or Columbus or Buffalo, and it will also go through where I used to live, Caribou, Maine, although that’s a much longer haul for me now.

I’ve been disappointed by a lot of astronomical events since I’ve lived in Pennsylvania, but I’m hoping the sun will be out on April 8. If not, I’ve got a few choices, although not many. It would be a drag to be so close and yet so far.