a blotted-out star on a Monday afternoon

I’ve always been fascinated by eclipses — so in 2017, when I got a chance to drive from Chicago to the outskirts of St. Louis to hang out in the path of totality, it was a no-brainer. I’ll only get 87 percent of an eclipse today in D.C., but on the occasion of my favorite astronomical event, I figured I’d eke out some thoughts.

We live in a world of explanations: for questions and ailments, for the right way to fix the sink and the wrong time to leave to pick up your mother at the airport. When were you last stumped for longer than the time it took to pull the tiny computer out of your pocket and type a few words?

I believe in answers. I always have, long before I got a computer or a smartphone or even a library card. I think I was born this way, ready to poke a hole in your good-enough logic, to solve a problem, to dress for the weather.

I went to Catholic school for six years, starting in seventh grade. And at some point, in some class, I learned that some historians had posited that either a solar or lunar eclipse might’ve been the root of some wild language used in the Bible to describe the crucifixion. Because of the way my brain is hardwired, Catholicism never took — but the eclipse hypothesis lodged in my consciousness. It was, after all, a pretty compelling explanation.

I share this not to call anyone’s beliefs into question. I’ve got my stuff; you’ve got yours. That’s a beautiful thing. And among my stuff, thanks in part to that middle-school revelation, is a fascination with eclipses, both the history they’ve wrought and the feelings they’ll make you feel if you ever get the chance to be a speck on earth, staring up at the not-supposed-to-be-dark sky.

In 2017, I went with my family to my uncle’s lake house in semi-rural Missouri, which sat squarely in the path of totality of that summer’s solar eclipse. That hot, hazy morning, we fought traffic out of St. Louis, a steady stream of cars flowing deeper into eclipse territory. We trudged out into a field near my uncle’s house, where people had pitched tailgate tents and set up grills. As we cracked beers and waited, the moon began its slow path to a complete overlap of the sun.

I expected the lead-up might feel a bit like dusk. I was wrong. It felt like a gathering storm: the sky monochrome, the shadows growing sharper at their edges. And then the owls hooted and the crickets sang and the hairs on my arms sprung straight up. It got breezy for a moment, then still and silent. For just longer than two minutes, the world was dark, almost – and the almost was what made it so unsettling. There was no thinking you’d set your watch wrong, that it was 1:15 a.m. instead of p.m. It wasn’t dark in the traditional sense of the word. It was murky, blurry, like the world had gone up in smoke.

Find me the most skeptical cynic, put him in front of a total solar eclipse, and he will believe: not necessarily in god or God or mystery or religion, but in why those things came to be. There are petroglyphs in Ireland from the 34th century BC that are believed to depict an eclipse, and near them, archaeologists found the charred remains of dozens of people. Across history, people turned to everything from ritual sacrifices to fasting to chanting and prayer as eclipses approached. And I get it: If I had less of an understanding of science and no chorus of news alerts counting down to this celestial event – if I lived in a less stable world, with fewer explanations – I too might have watched the moon slide in front of the sun and signed up for a set of beliefs that promised to restore order. I’d have offered something up to whatever in the otherworld might have the power to bring back the light.

A few brilliant humans figured out eclipses a couple thousand years ago. Moon, sun, paths through the sky, etc. Over time, we calculated how to predict them with greater and greater accuracy, but the thing that wows me most when I think about the way these explanations emerged and solidified into science isn’t the genius behind the discovery; it’s the limited means we had for so long to communicate it. Only very recently, an hour ago in the grand scope of human history, did we figure out how to beam news to most of the world in an instant. A century or two ago, an eclipse might have been a complete surprise to the average somebody, a blotted out star on what should have been an ordinary Monday afternoon. Even for people who put two and two together, it had to have been terrifying, at least for a fleeting moment.

Now, though – now we know. We see these things coming from a thousand days away. We book hotels and get in our cars and know the precise moment to stare up at the sky. We’ve explained the fear away, but somehow, improbably, the awe remains. In 2017, I stood dumbfounded in cardboard glasses, not quaking at the might of a vindictive deity, but still totally bowled over by nature’s ability to briefly pause the usual order of things. I felt something like belief — in the enduring power of wonder in a figured-out world.