P

eople 
have 
been 

going on pilgrimages 
for eons. Whether 

it’s to gaze upon the Shroud 
of Turin, visit the tomb of 
St. James or stand inside 
the vaulted nave of some 
distant cathedral, humans 
as a species have shown 
a remarkable capacity for 
uprooting themselves and 
their lives just for the chance 
to seek out meaning in some 
distant destination. In the 
Middle Ages, members of the 
faithful might travel for weeks 
on end to reach a holy site — 
some never arrived, and many 
never returned.

My trip took three days, 

more or less, a sort of hyper-
condensed there and back 
again. Automobility is a lovely 
thing, really, if you discount 
its contribution to the ongoing 
ecological catastrophe that is 
industrial capitalism. Not that 
I actually drove myself, though 
— somehow, over the course of 
the past half-decade or so, I’ve 
managed to avoid getting a 
driver’s license. I even took a 
driver’s education course once, 
but never followed up on the 
actual license acquisition part. 
Honestly, this fact probably 
isn’t a positive, but I’ve come 
to view it as a kind of eccentric 
point of pride. Regardless, 
when it came time to make the 
journey, I was reliant on two 
friends to make my way there.

Oh yeah, we went to see the 

eclipse. That’s there.

Does anyone really want to 

read about people going on 
a road trip of self-discovery 
anymore? We’ve had Kerouac, 
Nabokov and all the rest of 
them, so why bother with 
another? But whether we’ve 
had enough, somehow I can’t 
settle on any other story of 
my own to share, at least not 
one that I’d be comfortable 
presenting in a public setting. 
So this is what you get to read 
about, something that maybe 
has something meaningful 

to say but, unlike some other 
topics I considered, doesn’t 
make me address any of the 
uncomfortable 
questions 

bouncing around my head. 
So, tired a topic though it is, 
this is what I have, cliché and 
all.

The 
drive 
itself 
was 

enjoyable. I’d rather this piece 
not be documentarian in 
nature, but a few things that 
happened are worth writing 
down. Somewhere in Ohio on 

the first day we stopped at a 
diner for breakfast, whereat 
I was called a quitter by our 
server for turning down 
a 14th cup of coffee. Once 
we made it to Kentucky, 
the scenery was beautiful, 
and once we were on the 
winding mountain roads of 
the Appalachians, one of my 
friends took the wheel and 
led us on a high-speed ride 
that 
was 
simultaneously 

thrilling and terrifying.

When we arrived at my 

family’s home in Georgia, we 
were exhausted and happy 
to have a rest. We spend the 
night socializing with my 
parents, who were happy 
to actually see me at all 

last summer (I took classes 
spring and summer terms), 
and turned in relatively early 
to compensate for the hour at 
which we had to rise the next 
morning. When we got up, we 
hopped in the car and rode an 
hour or so north, traveling by 
back roads to avoid traffic.

Not surprisingly, when we 

entered the path of totality 
there were absurd numbers 
of people. The eclipse was 
certainly the largest secular 

pilgrimage I can think of, 
and it showed. Conservative 
estimates suggest that 20 
million people went out of 
their way to watch it, less 
conservative (ironically from 
the University of Michigan) 
estimates give 215 million 
as the number. A CNN poll 
beforehand indicated that a 
full half of the U.S. population 
at least considered watching 
it. Somehow we found a 
place to park, and along with 
innumerable others, set about 
climbing a mountain in a state 
park to get the best view. By 
this point in the day, the wet, 
Southern August heat felt 
oppressive, and though it was 
an easy trek, the walk felt long. 

In front of us on our way up 
was a shirtless, hippie-ish man 
burning incense and playing 
a wooden recorder. I really 
wonder what his story is.

At the apex of the mountain 

a crowd had gathered, far too 
many people to really settle 
in comfortably, so we looked 
around for alternative viewing 
options. After a consultation 
with 
a 
park 
ranger, 
we 

decided to hike back down the 
mountain (via a different route) 

in search of a lake that was 
allegedly there. Thankfully, it 
was, and after a few miles we 
arrived at the lakeside about an 
hour and a half before totality. 
So, we waited.

I’m not certain what to say 

about the eclipse itself. The sky 
went dark and the temperature 
dropped. 
Shadows 
shifted 

in uncanny ways and colors 
changed to subtly strange hues. 
Crickets began to chirp and 
birds flew in confused circles. 
A few bright stars appeared in 
the sky. For a few minutes, it 
felt as if the world had stopped 
turning on its axis — the whole 
thing was eerily biblical, really. 
When it passed, a moment had 
to be taken just to reorient.

Months later, the event (aside 

from being a memory that is just 
generally “cool”) left me with 
a few muddled up thoughts. 
Sitting there, watching as one 
gargantuan object passed in 
front of another astronomically 
— 
literally 
astronomically 

— larger one, I just couldn’t 
shake the feelings associated 
with being incredibly small 
compared to the sheer scale of 
the forces involved with what 
I was seeing. I’ve always had a 
sort of cursory fascination with 
the cosmos, in a kind of gee-isn’t-
this-really-cool-but-terrifying 
sort of way, and every so often 
— usually at night, always 
when alone — I experience this 
almost physical sensation of my 
person collapsing down into 
somewhere in my viscera while 
the whole incomprehensible 
expanse of the cosmos opens 
above me. Watching the eclipse 
was like that, but in slow 
motion.

I’ve 
always 
wondered 

about the expression “one in a 
million.” Most often it’s used to 
convey this idea of uniqueness, 
a kind of “you are special” 
utterance. But to my ears it can 
take on a far less comforting 
tone. When I hear “one in a 
million,” it reminds me of the 
mind-boggling immensity of 
it all, and of my own relative 
smallness. One out of a million 
is a very insignificant piece. 
But in journeying to see this 
astronomical event, I was 
one in millions, not a million. 
And the star that I watched 
be blotted out, our own life-
giving incandescent orb, isn’t 
even one in millions, but one 
in septillions. The hugeness 
of the universe is literally 
inconceivable to me. And 
that’s why, in the scheme of it 
all, I’m not sure what exactly 
my eclipse pilgrimage means, 
if anything at all. Maybe the 
lesson is simply that you’re 
not always the main character 
in the story you thought of as 
your own.

3B
Wednesday, October 25, 2017 // The Statement 

Personal Statement: Eclipse

BY DAYTON HARE, SENIOR ARTS EDITOR

ILLUSTRATION BY MICHELLE PHILLIPS

