Resurrecting the Tramp

Yes, I know the middle sun is larger

Had I named this blog “Annual Tramp,” I would still not have met the time frame of the title. But that was then, and this is now.

Let me begin the resuscitation with an event that was on all our minds last summer, the total solar eclipse. A good friend approached me about joining him on a road trip to a hidden canyon in northern Nevada. The canyon is just below the path of the total eclipse, so it was natural to shape our itinerary to include it. Years ago, dear friends who travel the world to view total solar eclipses emphatically told me that before I leave this earth, I must be sure to see one. I never forgot.

Our route north took us through Alturas where we snagged Highway 395. A couple miles before the Oregon border, we stopped at Stringer’s Orchard Distillery and bought some “craft” gin that would fuel the evenings ahead. By the time we got to John Day, eclipse hubbub was all around. The town buzzed and every ball field and vacant lot was partitioned with stakes and police tape into crisp rows of campsites. My companion, an avid maphead, had identified a specific remote location north of John Day, but when we got there, other eclipse viewers had beaten us to the punch. A bit farther north, several miles up a Forest Service road, we claimed a hilltop site with a sweeping view. Perfect.
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On much of our trip, the sky was murky with fire smoke, but eclipse morning dawned crystalline. Having done some eclipse photography homework, we set up our equipment, then sat and waited. Every source I consulted about photographing an eclipse finished with the same advice: don’t let your photography distract you from the magic of the event. And that is a danger. While the eclipse would last for about four hours, totality would be just over two minutes.

As the remaining slice of sun thinned toward totality, the air chilled. Sunsets have edges – shafts of light here, shadows there – but this was an eerie uniform dusk that evenly dimmed the hundreds of square miles we could see. Going, going, gone. People on our hilltop gasped and called out, and I felt a stirring I checked with a deep swallow and several rapid blinks. Overhead, an astounding jewel radiated needles of pure white light alone in the near total darkness.

Not even the seven-mile long string of cars waiting to get through the lone stop sign in Long Creek could tarnish the day. The friends who advised me to be sure to see a total solar eclipse were right.

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