From the time I was in the sixth grade to the time I graduated high school, I lived on the outskirts of the small town of New London, Ohio. Surround by plenty of flat cornfields and bean fields our little blue modular ranch house was set on eleven acres, with my closest neighbor being more than a hundred yards away. Needless to say it was quiet and there were always lots of stars to be seen in the night sky, and at times I swear you could see the bend of the earth. I spent many nights as a teenager looking up at the sky trying to find constellations I’d see in books. Like a lot of people I got really good at finding the big dipper, and if I tried harder I could sometimes locate the small dipper too. That always felt like a questionable accomplishment however, as I’m still not really sure what I thought was the small dipper, really was. I don’t know if you could see it well everywhere, but I felt like you could always find Orion in Ohio, or at the very least those three stars that make up his belt. I loved star gazing. I loved the idea of something beyond. The sky to me was a place to contemplate the vastness and unknowns in our universe, and to imagine. I’d wonder about why I was here, and my own existence, and it felt important to me to feel like I had a purpose in it all.

Even though I know theres a volatile nature to many things in the night sky, and always something in transition and fleeting, from afar there is a stillness that exists to it all. With how busy life can be it’s often hard to find moments of stillness, and peace, and quiet. I guess maybe that’s why I’ve become so intrigued by the upcoming eclipse, because the thing that sticks out to me most about it, at least in my head is this magical moment of complete stillness. If feels symbolically like a moment we can all stop and just be and watch.