I’m sure you have heard all the facts and stories about the Aug. 21, 2017, eclipse. There were 12,000 extra people in the Guernsey area, traffic was bumper to bumper, and it took 10 hours for the ‘Greenies’ to drive from Casper to Cheyenne. The town was awash with people and all the visitors were courteous and respectful. Thirteen of us, family and friends, gathered at our Guernsey Lake cabin, so I thought I would add some of my thoughts about the event. 

My initial thought was there was way too much hype and the event would be overrated. At least it was a good chance to drink. I really wasn’t sure what to except. 

It turned out to be phenomenal and amazing. My words cannot do it justice.

We sat in lined-up camp chairs donning those silly dark glasses which cost two dollars apiece, looking much like those unexpecting scientists who watched the atomic bomb explosion in the desert of Nevada in the ‘50s. Those scientists didn’t burn their eyes. They had special glasses too. They burned their entire bodies and then they died.

Every culture has a legend surrounding the eclipse. My favorite is that ancient Greeks believed the sun and moon came together every few years to copulate. The sun was the female and the moon the male and he was being devoured by the fiery sun. The Hindus remained inside during the eclipse and the Eskimos thought their utensils would become contaminated and useless if they did not turn them upside down. This belief remains today. 

I was amazed at the end of totality when the sun all of a sudden reached the edge of the moon and was brilliant. They call this the diamond ring and it is the most potentially dangerous for viewing. It can be 10-times as harmful as looking at the sun on a regular noneclipse day. 

During totality we saw Venus and Jupiter and other stars. I thought it would be total silence but people were yelling and honking their horns and all that cacophony echoed off the canyon walls in the park enhancing the uniqueness of the moment.

We witnessed a fantastically strange phenomenon as the rays of the sun passed through the leaves of the juniper trees along our gravel driveway. Strange shadows and hundreds of tiny pinhole eclipses displayed themselves on the ground. I said, “What the heck?”  Shannon, a cousin, quickly made a pinhole camera out of paper and we understood why the sunlight, through the leaves, could create such an oddity. 

The people in our hometown of Gillette were highly disappointed. At 92% darkness they weren’t even close to totality. The best they had was twilight. How could we be so lucky in Guernsey to have a total eclipse which may pass through only once in a hundred years. We were right on the path.

Many of our people left that day thinking they could beat the traffic. Yes, right. It took five hours for our grandson to get to Laramie. And six hours for Shannon to drive to Fort Collins. Oh, did I mention that half of Colorado and one fourth of Texas were in Wyoming. 

We travelled home the next day, on Tuesday, and all our chickens were acting funny. I couldn’t figure what was wrong with them and then it dawned on me. They hadn’t been in Platte County and they were blind. 

See you in 100 years for the next total eclipse in Guernsey.