Totality in Concord, Arkansas!

My first experience in the shadow of the Moon was a brief one on July 11, 1991, when my wife, son, and I were able to stare at the eclipsed sun for a few seconds through a gap in stubborn clouds on the Big Island of Hawaii. It was our son’s 11th birthday and a memory that will last a lifetime.

We were luckier on our second attempt, this time at the Santiam Golf Club in Aumsville, Oregon, when we spent more than two minutes in totality while the Moon’s shadow swept across northern Oregon on August 21, 2017. My panic when I couldn’t locate the Sun in the viewfinder of my camera at the start of totality ended when my son reminded me to remove the solar filter from my lens. Totality can be an “out of mind” experience.

Most good things don’t come easily and that was the case during the next total solar eclipse across North America on April 8, 2024. My son, his partner, and I arrived in San Antonio, Texas, five days early and resolved to drive our rental van as far as necessary to find a cloud-free sky. That turned out to be about 1,000 miles away in Concord, Arkansas, after several misses while we nervously adjusted our route using real-time cloud forecasts from NASA and the National Weather Service. Ultimately, we reveled in more than four minutes of “totality” darkness after some stubborn high clouds vanished just 15 minutes before the start of the eclipse. It was worth every minute and mile of the odyssey!

For a fascinating account of the science, history, and lore of solar eclipses, I recommend the book Mask of the Sun, written by John Dvorak and published by Pegasus Books.