Cosmic Events: Total Eclipse of our Attention

I've had the great fortune of witnessing two total solar eclipses: one in 2017 and another this past August, while walking the Camino de Santiago with an incredible group of Root travelers.

There are some things you have to experience to understand. A total solar eclipse is one of them.

For a few brief minutes, the world does something almost impossible to comprehend.

Daylight fades into twilight. Temperatures drop. Animals respond to the sudden darkness. And as the moon completely covers the sun, its shimmering corona appears, revealing a halo of superheated plasma that's almost always hidden from view.

And then there's the feeling of it.

During my first eclipse, I was camping deep in the Wyoming mountains with my husband and our then 18-month-old son. It was spectacular, majestic, and oh-so-intimate. As the sky went dark, we could hear cows mooing. My son woke from a deep sleep. There was this strange sense that the world had somehow gone off-kilter, in the most magical way imaginable.

This past August, we found ourselves in Lugo, standing atop its ancient Roman walls alongside hundreds of other eclipse watchers.

The energy was electric. Faces turned skyward, mouths agape. And yet, despite the crowds, there was a familiar sense of peace. As the moon slipped in front of the sun, the city seemed to fall still. Then came the collective ooohs and ahhhs as the magnitude of what we were witnessing sank in.

In Wyoming, the wildlife seemed caught off guard. In Lugo, it was the people. Even though we knew what was happening, nothing could quite prepare us for experiencing it.

And maybe that's what stays with me most: the magic of sharing a rare, extraordinary moment with other humans.

We spend so much of our lives consumed by activity, distraction, and entertainment, constantly looking for the next thing to capture our attention.

But there's something different about collective astonishment. About standing shoulder to shoulder with strangers, all looking up at the same sky, absorbed in something so much bigger than ourselves.

No screens. No commentary. No need to make sense of it all.

Just wonder, shared.

In a world that rarely stops moving, that kind of collective stillness feels almost as extraordinary as the eclipse itself.

🌑🌒🌓🌔🌕🌖🌗🌘🌑