Magical piece. I have a related question, what are my fellow HNers doing for the eclipse?

My original accommodations fell through (over-booked), and now I'm driving the family 12 hours west to camp in a friend's backyard in Nashville the night before the event (much lower chance of cloud-coverage west of the appalachians). At this point, everything along the path of the totality, hotels and camping, is completely booked.

The day of the eclipse, my biggest fear is cloud-coverage. So I'll be checking the weather and planning to hit the road at a moment's notice. I worked landscaping in college, and it's not hard to drive one town over to avoid clouds, but with so many people attending this thing, I anticipate a high-probability of traffic congestion.

Driving down to Oregon on Friday, wander around the U. S. Forest Service roads looking for dispersed camping. There’s a lot of U. S. Forest in that area, so I can’t imagine every dispersed camping spot will be spoken for. Most people turn around when they see “pavement ends”, I imagine, so I think we’ll be fine. VW camper with onboard water tank and kitchen, we can boondock it for a few days.

It’s that or nothing. Every campground and motel within the totality band in OR has been booked for six months. I’m hoping we get there a few days early, plop down in the middle of nowhere and not be bothered. I’m truly curious to see how it goes. Could be the clusterfuck that’s predicted, could be a bust when less than hardcore folks decide it’s not worth the hassle.

Cloud cover in the OR high desert in August? How many times have I wished for such while on the motorcycle in OR? If that rare event were to happen on eclipse day, then God truly hates us. YMMV in other parts of the country.

I will be flying in to SeaTac from AK on Friday night and driving down to Oregon on Saturday. We have a place to stay in Bend, but no plans beyond driving back North to the region of totality. Redmond, 15 miles north gets 38 seconds of totality. We would like to be as smack in the middle as we can manage, but it will depend largely on traffic and weather.

We will probably try and find a nice open field and hang out during the event, then head back to Bend sometime the same day.

We may also wind up heading east from Bend, then north, again depending on traffic and weather.

Now that is hardcore. Here I was wondering if an eight hour drive was too much trouble. :-) Keep in mind that all predictions are that traffic anywhere near places like Bend, Redmond, or (worst of all) Madras is going to be a mess. Plan accordingly, especially if you're used to AK where heavy traffic means someone is in front of you at the stoplight. I'm hearing "hours" to get through Bend or Redmond on eclipse day. But there are little to no historical data to work with, so who knows?

Anyway, if you see an old yellow VW Westfalia with its top popped way up on a hill northeast of Madras, honk as you go by.

I’m hoping to fly to a clear-sky airport in the totality path, possibly SRB[0], and will be watching the weather as the day gets nearer to improve the odds of a good viewing.

I have heard Carbondale[1] may see more than 200 airplanes. With that much traffic, a control tower would be a good thing, but there aren’t a ton of Class D airports in the region.

[0]: http://www.airnav.com/airport/KSRB

[1]: http://www.airnav.com/airport/KMDH

Driving a few hours north to Wyoming on Saturday, and hoping to land a spot of BLM land close to the center of the path. Bringing a bunch of water, extra gas, sun shade, and a cooler of beer to wait it out a few days.

I'll also be launching a weather balloon before the event in hopes of catching some video of totality from >100k feet. A disc shadow 60 miles wide traveling at 1,500 mph as viewed from 20 miles up should be pretty cool. :)

Booked an airbnb in Nashville back in January. It has a decent-sized backyard. I'm flying in from San Diego and my parents are driving up from Tallahassee.

My fears are cloud coverage, and way, way too many people in general. I'm worried about my parent's drive home after the eclipse.

Related question: What are you using to view the eclipse during non totality?

  - Paper film eclipse glasses
  - Welding goggles
  - Solar binoculars
  - Pinhole reflector
  ...

Whatever you use, make sure it is ISO certified!

I had luck booking a place with Airbnb, in Idaho.

I got excited and thought at first glance this was referencing the film about Arthur Rimbaud before I saw the date. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_Eclipse_(film))

Confusion aside, I'll definitely give this a read!

I got excited that it might be about this 1981 Klaus Nomi song from "Urgh! A Music War":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmLk2vSXXtk

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urgh!_A_Music_War

16 year old me wishes he'd seen this

same here!

Thanks, I'll read that tonight.

Another work by Annie Dillard, 'The Force that Drives the Flower' was also published in the Atlantic and it's a pleasure to read (YMMV):

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1973/11/the-for...

'Pilgrim at Tinker Creek', the book it was excerpted from, won the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction in 1975.

I thought this was going to be about the spectrum game! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_Eclipse_(1988_video_game...

Wow, what a beautiful piece. Fascinating mix of philosophy and art and science. It also made me even more excited to see the eclipse on the 21st.

I had been wondering if people would scream.