by For David Makepeace, it was simply falling in love with an eclipse.
It was 1991. He was 28, and in love with a young travel agent in his hometown of Toronto.
“Me and the moon were struck first,” he said. “We would sit and watch the moon rise and set … So the moon was already part of … the culture of our relationship.”
His girlfriend was recruited to visit La Paz, Mexico, to help with what was sure to be an influx of eclipse chasers and tourists from neighboring California. She told him that he was supposed to be quite on the show. He decided to join her a few days before the eclipse.
On the day of the eclipse, they ended up on top of a hill, with a clear sky and the vastness of the Pacific Ocean stretching out forever.
And then it happened.
The moon slowly eclipsed the sun, and darkness descended. The sun’s corona was all that was visible for about six minutes. And life was changing.
“I spent the first few days sitting on the shore of the Sea of Cortez, with pelicans flying in and out, and diving in and out of the water, thinking about my own life and how something could be so wonderful that, and He felt that I had to do something about it.”
He knew he was going to see another one.
Today, Makepeace is one of Canada’s most prolific eclipse trackers. He has seen eclipses from a plane over the Norwegian Sea, Antarctica, China, Libya and Zambia, to name just a few places.
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But it is more than passion, it is something spiritual that is with him 24/7.
“The initial spiritual experience is really just an awakening to the fact that you are not just the things you are thinking in your head and the two-dimensional identity that you have.”
euphoric feeling
Jay Anderson is a former meteorologist with Environment and Climate Change Canada – and another popular Canadian eclipse watcher, having chased the moon’s shadow for 45 years.
“Traveling is a great part of the eclipse for me and the eclipse itself,” he said. “Because sometimes you have to go to really remote places – places that no tourist from any country has ever seen before.”
Like Makepeace, Anderson traveled the world to watch eclipses, visiting places like Antarctica, Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Madagascar, Egypt and Rwanda.
He believes that solar eclipses are the best displays of nature.
“Mother Nature gives man several different shows,” he said. “I mean, you could say forest fires, hurricanes – I know people who chase hurricanes, they also chase tornadoes – but the solar eclipse is one of those harmless spectacles, in the sense that it leaves no destruction behind; it leaves a lot of people shouting and shouting and mostly happy.”
It is that human experience that he loves so much.
“I also say that I’m a bit of an eclipse vampire, because I like to sit next to someone who has never seen it, and the feeling of feeling a little bit lost from them too,” he said.
“I love the moments after the eclipse when everyone is just, I mean, just euphoric, really. And it’s a feeling that we don’t often get together as humans.”
‘It’s addictive to watch’
Fred Espenak is a retired NASA astronomer and the agency’s chief eclipse expert.
He saw his first eclipse when he was 11. And like many others, he knew that once was not enough.
“When the eclipse was over, I had so much experience that I immediately realized, ‘No, this can’t be a once-in-a-lifetime experience. I have to see another one.’ And that was the beginning for me.”
He says traveling to see an eclipse is a gamble, but it usually pays off.
“It’s an addictive thing to see. It’s so exquisitely beautiful and exciting,” he said.
“And you only get a minute or two or in rare cases, four minutes to see it every two years or so … so it’s a challenge to try to get to the right place and the right time and the fighting real weather, but the reward is just an incredible experience.”
He visited every continent in search of those few minutes of almost magical darkness during the day.
“In the last 30 seconds, in the direction that the shadow of the moon is approaching, the sky grows quite dark. And in those 30 seconds, you are suddenly covered by the edge of the shadow of the moon as it sweeps over your location,” Espenak said the moment of completeness.
“Your daylight suddenly breaks into this deep darkness. It’s not as dark as night, but it’s as dark as the sky, maybe 30 or 40 minutes after sunset,” a he said.
“It’s dark enough for the naked eye to pick out the bright planets and maybe a handful of bright stars. But you’re plunged into that evening in a second. So it’s very dramatic, very sudden, scary.”
Makepeace will be chasing the shadow of the moon in Mazatlan, Mexico, where the weather prospects are very good. But if he finds a cloud – which has happened before – it will not affect his spirituality.
“After all these years, there’s still nothing I’m really looking for from the eclipse other than that experience that I absolutely love,” he said, noting that the sense of his own soulfulness he experienced during his first eclipse something that is around him. the time.
“And thank you eclipses, for helping to sort out that disposition.”
