The total eclipse of the sun on Earth is one of the coolest coincidences in the universe, like life itself. Other planets experience eclipses, but only on Earth is our moon 400 times closer than a sun that's 400 times larger.

Those few minutes of totality are transcendent. That feeling ended a war in Greek times and birthed science. Predicting eclipses became the game (chasing that high), and it wasn't until Newton's laws of gravity that we could predict totality to the minute. 200 years later Einstein came up with more general laws of physics, which were confirmed, unsurprisingly, during a total solar eclipse.

Part of the magic for me is how obvious planetary motion becomes during an eclipse. The stars and moon are always moving but too slowly to appreciate with a naked eye. Totality is fast and sudden! For a moment, I can feel how big and fast these spheres are.

Then there's the sky, which is the craziest thing I've ever seen. I couldn't put it into words during the 2017 eclipse but this anonymous comment captures it perfectly:

“A sky with a total solar eclipse is a new, third kind of sky that is neither like day or night. It's as different from those as they are from one another.”

Seeing it from a mountaintop made it extra special:

Joanna and I are first to summit. The wind is a sustained 30mph. There's a small wind shelter at the top and I grab a spot but Joanna is skeptical about spending the next two hours here.

Megan and Bronya, conservationists from Maine, and Derek, a Course 24 major from back in the day, take the remaining spots in the shelter. We hunker down, wrap ourselves in Bronya's rainfly, occasionally peeking at the sun with our eclipse glasses.

It gets colder and windier as the sun becomes a tiny crescent. What looks like a rainstorm approaches us from the west. But that's not a storm, that's the moon's shadow!

It engulfs us and we erupt in emotion. We're high enough to get a 360° sunset: “There's sunrises and sunsets in every direction!”

2m40s later the tiny crescent reemerges and that's enough to bring back the sky we're used to. I watch the shadow move towards Katahdin.

This show has been on the calendar for a billion years, and I'm so grateful I got a ticket.