This eclipse was a much anticipated event. The 1979 eclipse was a bust for me. I was working for an engineering/surveying company in La Grande in NE Oregon and we were in the path of totality. It occurred in the morning around starting time at work so we planned on setting up the theodolites with solar filters in the parking lot and having a (La) grand old time. The day dawned dark and overcast and stayed that way. We all stood forlorn in the Anderson Perry parking lot, hands in pockets, instrument boxed up in the trucks, looking up as the low overcast sky went from 8:00AM overcast dark to midnight overcast dark and back again. Meanwhile all my friends back in Bend had taken the day off, driven up to Shaniko and environs in the sunny high desert, saw the elephant, and had a great time. Hmmm, well the next one I??ll take time off, go to a predictably good spot and do it right. These things happen every couple years, right?
38 years later and Old Sol??s shadow is going to make a moon shadow race across the landscape at 2,400 MPH a mere 15 miles north of my abode. Months ahead of time I schedule a day off for Monday, June 21, 2017 to see the eclipse here in Central Oregon
So did a couple hundred thousand other folks from all over the world.
There is a beautiful place up in the Ochoco Mountains called Big Summit Prairie. A 35 square mile prairie at about 4,500 feet surrounded by ponderosa pine/fir forest.
The Prairie is a privately owned ranch and the owner partnered with a festival organization called Symbiosis to hold a get together for the eclipse.
They got an event permit from Crook County (population 21,630, area 2,987 sq. mi.) to hold an event for 30,000 people. Ticket price $300.
70,000+ were in attendance.
A 20 mile long 5 MPH traffic jam snaking up into the mountains ensued:
This was a week long affair that started Wednesday 8/16 and ended today. Just in time to scoot on down to the Black Rock for Burning Man. Not MY idea of a campout, but being a surveyor I??m a bit of a curmudgeonly contrarian I guess.
The Austin Texas Welcome Wagon was in attendance sporting those platform shoes that Kent always raves about:
And as totality approached the 24 hour/day techno music from the 7 stages stopped for an entire hour so Dieter, Starla, Berta, Klaus and their 70,000 newfound friends. dressed in their best festival duds, could stand shoulder to shoulder and dig the grooveitude of totality.
On the home front we did things a bit differently. A while back I scouted out a spot on Steamboat Rock on BLM land just west of the Lower Bridge crossing of the Deschutes River in the east half of Section 10, T14S, R12E, W.M. Maureen, our friend Bob, the kelpie dog Sage and I packed a picnic breakfast of egg and bacon biscuits, a thermos of coffee and a bottle of champagne and hit the road at 6:00AM. I was dressed in my festival wear for this momentous event:
30 miles of back roads later we hiked to the top of Steamboat, set up camp and entertained ourselves for the next couple hours with crossword puzzles (Sage and Maureen)
?? and scientific experiments (Bob and me)
?? and readied ourselves for the big event
About a minute before totality I trained my camera on the forest fire smoke shrouded Cascade Mountains to the west in order to rage against the dying of the light. This is what ensued (please forgive the (1) spots on the lens and (2) my inane, mumbling, "oh wow man" commentary. This was such a blow-your-hair-back and send-goose-bumps-up-your-neck experience. This starts out looking west toward the mountains and then goes north, around to the east, continues back west (Maureen is north of me, Bob is south) and then snaps back to the sun when it goes, like, totally totes, dude. :
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To look up and see the sun turned into a big black pearl ringed with sparkler sizzle, hanging high in the sky, is like nothing I've ever seen. And I'll be heading east to see it again in 2024. Not with tens of thousands of freaks, but with Maureen and hopefully a couple curmudgeonly contrarian surveyor brethren on the other side of the great divide who have done some scouting.
