At twenty minutes until totality it was finally time to stop watching
space.tv's live stream and make that five minute walk down the alley to
a nearby park. A park with a stocked pond that's wild enough for eagle
eyed birds of prey to slowly circle, crook their wings, dive down, and
pluck fish clean out of the water. Fishing's always good for both man
and bird.

One four lane highway is all that separates the pond in the park from
three hundred miles of wilderness that plunge South deep into Colorado.
Three hundred miles of bears, foxes, mountain lions, bobcats, and
wolves.

A few dozen people greeted us at the gravel parking area that marks the
end of the alley and the start of the park. A guitar was strummed while
kids ran around. My wife and I continued on foot across the pond dam to
a spot in the park that offers a patch of dark that's great for star
gazing amid a sea of house light pollution. The plan was to identify
the constellations that appeared during totality.

The temperature steadily dropped as the moon crept over the face of the
sun. It became easier to watch the landscape darken by the second. It
became a unique sort of twilight.

The piece of white paper carefully placed on the path never did show the
promised shadow bands. Then the Sun dramatically disappeared from sight.
Too fast for me to see the Baily's beads effect, or the Diamond ring
effect.

Off came my solar eclipse glasses and on came my corrective lenses. The
tears, goosebumps, and emotions that others experience never happened to
me. Instead my naked eyes stared down the Sun. It filled /me/ with a
supernatural sense of power. More about that in a moment.

Next came the surrealism. The eclipsed Sun was both the brightest thing
and the darkest thing that my naked eyes have ever seen. The whole park
became Daliesque in the style of "Starry, starry, night." [1]

A pink sunrise/sunset on the horizon normally encircles viewers during
totality. The pink sunrise/sunset was more pastel than expected.

The sky remained blue, too bright for the expected constellations to
appear. Finally a pinpoint of white is discerned in the blue sky. It's
Venus. There's another white pinpoint Southwest of it. It's Sirius.

My eyes vainly search the ecliptic for stars. My eyes eventually turn
North to seek out Ursa Major and see nothing. Time goes by far too fast
and a sliver of Sun suddenly appears to rob me of my ecliptic superpower
sight faster than Kryptonite smacks down Superman.

Lessons learned:

* Purchase hundreds of eclipse glasses beforehand to send to friends and
family who live outside of totality. Even a partial solar eclipse is a
mesmerizing sight to behold and they end up with a souvenir.

* Use stellarium software immediately beforehand to get the "lay of the
land."

* Forget about the shadow bands and focus on the Sun to catch a fleeting
glimpse of Baily's beads and the Diamond ring effects.

* Forget about the best spot to stargaze at night. It just doesn't
matter. Any spot will do.

Note.

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxHnRfhDmrk

Thank you,

--
Don