CSotD: Worth a look
Skip to comments
Feeling burnt out this morning, a bit like Tina in today's Tina's Groove: I ought to care, I'm probably missing something, and yet …
After a couple of decades, you begin to slide into "been there, done that," and staying up to bizarre hours to watch the moon disappear falls into that category, I'm afraid.
Laying aside the potential of a broader metaphor, I've seen total eclipses, both lunar and solar, and I'm glad I have, but, having done so, the prospect of seeing another one reminds me of Samuel Johnson's evaluation of the Giant's Causeway: "Worth seeing, yes; but not worth going to see."
And yet in looking up the exact wording of his quote, I also found this one: "A man who has not been in Italy, is always conscious of an inferiority, from his not having seen what it is expected a man should see."
And there you have Tina's dilemma.
For astronomy buffs who know what to look for, I'm sure each lunar eclipse is special. For the rest of us, well, the moon really isn't apt to break into old music hall standards, but,if it did, you'd hate to have missed it.
My first total lunar eclipse came when I was 13 or 14, on a night midwinter enough that a couple of buddies and I built a fire in the middle of the bay between our homes. The ice was about three feet thick, the night was more than a little crisp and we sat in our lawn chairs, smoked cigarettes and cussed as only boys that age can, and once in a while one of us would look up and say, "Look at it now!"
I was nearly 30 when I got to see my first total solar eclipse and was more focused on my kids' experience than my own. We made a pin-hole viewer and did the whole thing up right, and I don't know how much of it they remember, but they've got another shot coming up next year on August 21, assuming they don't leave the country.
Because I wouldn't fly my Lear Jet to Nova Scotia for the experience, but it's worthwhile when it comes your way.
I'll say this: The solar eclipse was nowhere near, not even close, to being as oversold as Halley's Comet had been. I was prepared to go out and read the newspaper by the light of Halley's Comet when it made its pass in my lifetime, because we were told we'd be able to.
Pfft. For those who missed it, the experience was "Is that it? No, that one! Or is it the one next to it?"
Thank goodness for Hale-Bopp, which didn't light up the planet but looked like a comet and happened to coincide with my GF getting a young, energetic pup who needed lots of walks. We'd take him out at night and there would be Hale-Bopp, a little bigger, a little brighter, a little more cometty, until it became less and less and less.
But also thank goodness for the dog, because otherwise we might have glimpsed the comet a few times while coming and going from somewhere else, and it was worth staying out there for a bit, as it is when the Northern Lights make an appearance that is less than wall-to-wall.
It may not be worth going to see, but it's worth seeing and you'd be silly not to take the time.
Which brings us back to that Lear Jet which you ought not to fly to Nova Scotia. Maybe not.
But if you had gone up to Nova Scotia for two weeks of relaxation and tea in Peggy's Cove and wandering around to some relatively-nearby Percé Rock and Anne of Green Gables sorts of places, it would have been worth going and then the total eclipse would be worth seeing.
And that August, 2017, eclipse path looks like it includes Yellowstone.
In fact, it looks like there are a number of place on that track that are worth going to see.
Comments 4
Comments are closed.