No, I'm not talking about the 2024 eclipse that would have required us to travel long distances to areas of intense price-gouging, with no money-back guarantees if the sky chooses to cloud over.
I am talking about the one that practically landed in my backyard.
It was 2017 and our property here in the high desert of Central Oregon had a large excavated spot where our house would soon be. We were living a few hundred feet away in our motorhome.
The epicenter, AKA Ground Zero, AKA the PLACE TO BE ..... for this eclipse was proclaimed to be none other than little Madras, Oregon. (Population: not a lot) Why? Because it was smack dab in the middle of The Path and it's in the desert where the sun usually shines and the sky is clear, right?? .... But what the proclaimers didn't think about was that it was August, also smack dab in the middle of fire season with its ensuing smoke. Much too common in this part of the world.
Our property is within an hour's drive from Madras and Husband, in full faith, was making plans. Big plans.
Included in his vast list of hobbies, is photography ..... especially and almost exclusively taking pictures of anything in space .... planets, stars, galaxies, oddly named things like the "Orion Nebula". His collection of telescopes, tripods, camera setups that track planet movement, etc, is ever-growing. Needless to say, he was determined to photograph every phase of this rare event, come hell or high water.
Meanwhile, the media, with its constant thirst for viewership, was in full throttle with ominous predictions of what was about to descend upon little Madras and its surrounding communities. The highways would be bumper-to-bumper, they said. Food and gas would run out. Strangers would trample upon private property. "Human sacrifice! Dogs and cats living together! Mass hysteria!!"* In other words, we needed to stock up and hunker down as we awaited the Apocalypse.
So we did. Gas tanks were filled (causing some local gas stations to temporarily run out well before any crowds arrived). Groceries were purchased and No Trespassing signs popped up all around.
A couple of days before the big weekend, we were about three hours away in western Oregon. We decided to drive home early in the morning, hoping to be ahead of the east-bound, eclipse-seeking traffic tidal wave.
"Strange", we commented to each other, during that trip. No traffic. The towns we passed through as we got closer to home, were eerily empty. In fact, as we later learned, other than congestion on the main street of Madras (easily avoided by driving one block to a side street), the highways were completely normal. There were some well-behaved crowds of people camped in and around Madras, but besides that, you'd never know anything was happening. The only thing close to disastrous that I saw was (and you might want to sit down for this) Dairy Queen ran out of some menu items. (As it turned out, the overhype of the media scared a lot of people away.)
Meanwhile, back at the ranch as they say .... we woke up that morning to .... you guessed it ..... smoke. Still hours before start time, we jumped in the car and drove about ten miles, hoping to find blue sky. Nope. However, by the time the eclipse began, the smoke cleared.
Husband was ready. He had planned this thoroughly. NASA and/or the Hubble Telescope had nothing on what was going on at our place.
His cameras were set up on our aforementioned excavated building site, and pointed skyward. I was enlisted to sit there with my finger poised on a camera push button, and click (take a picture) ... count to six ... click (another picture) ... count to six ... click ... count ... click, until told to stop. At the same time, he was doing something similar with another camera. Our bases were covered. Nothing could go wrong. We even, as I vaguely recall, rehearsed.
It began as planned. We clicked and counted, over and over, as we watched the event unfold. But then things went awry. Husband being so excited over what he was seeing, suddenly exclaimed, "OH NO, I lost count!" "I messed up!" (Or something like that.)
"I'm clicking! I'm doing it!" I protested. But frustration and disappointment replaced the excitement as Husband fretted about failing.
After it ended, I walked quietly back to the motorhome. It didn't help when all the Facebook photos began to pop up online by friends who had had happy social gatherings, sitting together and enjoying the eclipse .... noticing odd shadows, animal reactions, or whatever is supposed to accompany this rare phenomenon.
That said, the photos turned out beautifully, all was well, and lessons were learned .... meaning, if I ever experience another eclipse, I will do nothing but sit with my funny little cardboard glasses ..... and watch.
(The Orion Nebula)
*Ghostbusters
