WARNING: TEXT WALL INCOMING
tl;dr - the eclipse was beyond amazing. But if you want a more detailed write-up, keep reading!
So, you might be sick of hearing about that gosh darned freaking Eclipse by now, but I wanted to write up my thoughts, impressions, and feelings of it, after having experienced Totality in Rexburg yesterday, and offer my opinions on why I feel everyone should experience it at least once in their lives.
I've experienced an Eclipse before. I don't remember the exact year, but it was around 2009 probably, and we stood out on the street in my parent's neighborhood, and took turns looking at the sun through either 1) some special glasses that someone had, or 2) my neighbor's welding mask he brought over. I remember thinking "Yeah, this is pretty cool I guess" and finding it moderately interesting that the moon was covering the sun, and slightly more interesting that it suddenly got all dark in the middle of the daytime. The eclipse ended, and we all went home, and I hardly thought about it ever again. I didn't know it then, but that was only a partial solar eclipse. I'm actually not even sure right now how much of an eclipse it was, but I'm certain it wasn't a total eclipse.
So you can imagine that, when I heard about the "Great American Eclipse" of 2017, I was just sorta like "Meh, I've seen one before." It was cool and all, but I had sort of a "been there, done that" attitude toward it.
That is, until I watched this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qc7MfcKF1-s (video credit, Destin Sandlin @ Smarter Every Day, a very cool YouTube channel)
I had no idea that all those other things happened during a Total eclipse, but what really grabbed me was the Shadow Bands. I wanted to see those. I wanted to see those bad. So I expressed my interest in driving up to Rexburg, Idaho to my sweet wife, where her family lives, which happened to be very close to the center of the totality plane. At first, she was a little iffy about it, but I figured she would basically jump at any opportunity to go see her family in her beloved Idaho, so it wouldn't be that hard of a sell for her. She agreed to go, and we made preliminary plans for it.
I'm sure you don't want to hear about all the plans and how we executed them, so I'll cut to the chase.
My biggest goals for the eclipse were 1) to see the Shadow Bands 2) to behold Totality and be able to take off my eclipse glasses. The extra things like Bailey's Beads, Diamond Ring, and the 360 degree "horizon sunset" were just bonuses.
I could never ever have prepared myself for how incredible, amazing, awe-inspiring, tranquil, interesting, and exciting this event was. I expected to like it. I didn't expect to have an experience that I would remember, and strive to remember, for the rest of my life. I keep searching for adjectives to describe it, but I simply can't seem to come up with any to adequately express how cool it was. The only one I can think of that even comes close is "indescribable," and that's some real cruel irony...
If you think I'm overreacting, you should know that I generally don't get super hyped about a lot of stuff, and I generally don't consider driving 4 hours (much less 10 hours on the way back, oy vey what a trip) to be worth it for many things, since I don't care much for road trips. But let me tell you, the 14+ hours I spent in the car for this experience that would last all of a couple minutes, was totally worth it, and I absolutely would do it again (though hopefully I'd plan better next time so I didn't have to spend 14+ hours in the car...)
I have spoken to numerous people who have said something along the lines of "10 hour drive back home? Yeesh, I'm glad I didn't go." or "the partial eclipse was good enough for me" or "it's not that special, why bother?" and to them I can now confidently say... you have absolutely no idea what you missed. Okay, I will allow for some wiggle room if some of these people just don't find space or science or natural phenomena interesting at all and would rather pursue other avenues of whatever they find entertaining, but for everyone else, you missed out. And I'm not here to insinuiate that EVERYONE needed to do EVERYTHING they could to get into the path of totality, and if you didn't, you just weren't dedicated enough. I get it. Some people had to work. Some people have families that they couldn't just uproot. Some people had kids that needed to go to school (I actually missed the first day of classes for it, but y'know, whatever ;)). Whatever your reasons for not being able to go, I accept them. If there was something actively preventing you from going, you can feel safe knowing that I'm not here to make you feel bad.
But for those people that simply opted not to because they didn't think it was very special or didn't want to deal with the crowds or the traffic, just remember that someone who doesn't even like short road trips, considered the drive back home that was 2.5x longer than normal, to have been totally worth the experience of being in the path of totality and witnessing some of the most awe-inspiring natural phenomena our amazing solar system can deliver to us tiny earthlings. I would probably never ever consider driving even 30 minutes away, for anything else that I knew in advance would only last a mere 2 minutes and 17 seconds, only to have to drive back 30 minutes. I can't, off the top of my head, think of anything that would feel worth that, to me. Hopefully that should put it into perspective.
So there it is. If you missed it, I feel genuinely sorry for you. But now that I have tasted of the pristine sweetness that is a Total Solar Eclipse, no partial eclipse for the rest of my life will suffice. There is, quite simply, so much more to see, experience, and behold while in the path of Totality, than any partial solar eclipse can deliver.
April, 2024, will bring the next Total Solar Eclipse to the continental United States, which will be almost entirely on the East Coast, and we are already planning to make a trip out there to see it. It was that incredible.
