Staring at the Sun

If I’m being honest, I never imagined I’d ever visit the state of Arkansas. However, there are some famous rivers such as the White and Little Red, which hold brown trout that would eat the browns I’ve been catching recently. In 1992, a 40 pound brown trout was caught below Greer’s Ferry Lake (where we stayed) and after fishing the Little Red during my trip I can understand why. Unfortunately for me (and luckily for the fish), the water was shut off the day of my scheduled guide trip so I fished the deep areas, but it was more like fishing a pond than a river. I still had success and even caught a hard fighting largemouth bass, which was a lot of fun on the fly, but not the same as a big river trout. The dam is used for hydroelectric power so when the lake is the correct level and they don’t need the electricity, the spigot gets shut off.

Now, since I was there I had to fish, but that’s not why seven other friends (old and new) and I met up in Arkansas. I am not an astronomer and I don’t know much about eclipses other than the fact that they can be lunar, solar, partial or perhaps something else I don’t even know about, but I do know events like this bring people together and that was the point. I hadn’t seen a few of these friends who are really more like siblings in a few years and it took the eclipse to get us all under the same roof.

It was strange wearing those glasses waiting for something to happen that actually seemed unlikely until the moon had covered up about 90% of the sun. It started to get cooler and darker. It felt like dusk at 1:45pm. I was thinking about how native peoples must have felt witnessing their first eclipse and not knowing what was happening. I thought about how several volcanic eruptions or a massive meteor strike would have also led to increased darkness, cooler weather, and a lot of dead dinosaurs.

We went to Greer’s Ferry because we were promised over four minutes of totality (weather permitting), and we got it. Taking off those glasses and staring at the sun for those four minutes was eerie and breathtaking at the same time. Trust me, this isn’t my thing, but as those four plus minutes faded away in time (too quickly I might add), the event became a moment I’ll never forget. The next total eclipse in the United States won’t be until August of 2044 so I’ll have plenty of time to reminisce about this one.

I do wonder what the ancient Babylonians thought about what must have seemed like a horrifying, cataclysmic event. In fact, I found an article about it so feel free to dig deeper if you like. I probably would have freaked out. Picture it, I’m sitting along the banks of the Tigris River just tending my crops like the good farmer I would’ve been and all of a sudden, darkness engulfs broad daylight and then spits it back out within several minutes. That’s crazy.

We live in a beautiful world full of wonder and delight yet, so many people are unhappy. I know that I’m lucky to live in a truly gorgeous place that helps me reset after a bad day at school, but Arkansas was beautiful too. We went to Blanchard Springs Caverns, which is a stunning, otherworldly experience you have to throw money at if you ever visit. I had never seen anything quite like it and that was before the eclipse. Don’t forget the splendor that’s right outside your door everyday because trust me, it’s there.

I’ve been rewatching Mad Men (again) and that line recently came up. “Why is it so hard to just enjoy things?” I’ve been thinking about that since I saw that episode and I realized that it’s not.

It’s our choice to enjoy life and if that’s the moon covering up the sun for four minutes knowing we’ll be just fine before, during and after it, then I say enjoy. Historically though, I’m glad I wasn’t an Aztec POW because eclipse or not, I’d be dead meat.

Enjoy the April showers because in most of the country, it smells, sounds, and feels like Spring is finally here.