The Great American Solar Eclipse 2017: A Moment Among Moments

Strong, cold wind blows down the beach, the water is so cold my toes tingled and the kids still get soaked from head to toe, splashing in the space between solid land and sea.

The kids shriek and run.  They gather up rocks, poke at pieces of jelly fish, and these moments alone would have been worth the drive.  The moments with friends and the most decadent camping food, in the history of camping, would have been worth the drive.

But, the excuse for this trip, is a moment 1 minute and 55 seconds in length.

Intellectually, I had been prepared for this moment.

We had listened to podcasts, heard other people's stories, shushed the children on the eleven hour drive split between two days: "Shhh!!! Listen, to this story.  They are talking about what we are about to see."

"Don't look at the sun without your glasses.  It's dangerous."

The sun was bright, the temperature dropped, our shadows become duplicate, the spaces between the leaves turned into a thousand pinhole cameras, and then the light rolled in waves.

Emotionally, I was completely unprepared.

In an instant the moon and sun became one and neither was recognizable. I dropped to my knees and found myself staring into the space that just moments before had been the sun, it felt as though my whole being was being drawn into the center of our solar system, looking past the center, at the bright dot of Venus on its orbit beyond the sun.

Time stood still.

Time moved too fast.

People cheered and it was a moment we all shared, and yet I have never felt so void of my own physical presence.

Much too quickly a blinding flash of light shot back into view and the process reversed. The light rolled across the ground and the shadow crescents mirrored those before.

I yearned to be in the moment a little longer, but just as instant as the return to light had been, the physical was all too real and I realized just how long we had been staring, off and on, directly at the sun. The kids tugged at my arms.  "Can we go?" "I'm hungry."

We order lunch and occasionally get up to check the progress of the sun across the sky.

We dawdle on the way home.

We drive through the forest, a dirt road edged by blackberries so thick that they blend reality with that found on the pages of a Tom Robbins novel,  small state highways that lead us though small towns, past farm stands and, eventually deliver us into the endless golden expanse of wheat fields.

Too soon, our route overlaps that of previous adventures and we stop in at our ritual last destination before heading home.

Going home seems unusually hard. The sky is black and heavy with smoke and in passing we see trees silhouetted against pockets of flame on the hill side. We unload.  The whole trip seems surreal. The proof we went somewhere, saw something, is the giant pile of dirty laundry spread out across the floor, a large box of canning peaces on my kitchen counter, and the knowledge I now know at least one way to cook clams.

Steamed Clams - AKA Best Damn Camping Food Ever 

I had never, ever cooked clams before.  I don't live by a coast and they always look terrifying when I quickly walk past them at the grocery store seafood counter.   We stopped at a seafood market, looking for oysters, and because it is the wrong season we brought back 5 pounds of clams....  and I got a much needed cooking lesson.

6 cloves of garlic (thinly sliced)

2 sticks of butter 
1 bottle of white wine

• heat the butter in a large pot and add garlic
• pour the entire bottle of wine into the pot, bring to a rolling boil,  let it boil for a while

5 lbs (more or less) clams
Salt to Taste

• pour the clams in the pot, add a good solid shake of salt, put a lid on the pot and bring it back to a rolling boil
• while the clams are boiling/steaming chop a parsley

1 bunch of parsley  

• Stir a few times, and make sure the clams have opened.. add parsley and serve with bread (toasted/grilled if possible)

Lemon? 

• there might have been a squeeze or two of lemon involved.  I'm not certain...  there definitely was lots of laughter, my rowdy kids, good friends and a few beers - so, not sure on the lemon...  but it certainly can't be bad.  

NOTE: If a clam didn't open while cooking, DON'T eat it.  No one wants to find out what happens when you eat unopened clams.