Images of totality I captured during the total solar eclipse, August 21, 2017,
Madras, Oregon. The flash washed me out in the selfie shot, but I like the "Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite" tone overall. The skies might be out of a
John Martin painting. In spite of the doomsday forecasts of media and government, matters associated with the event mostly rolled smoothly. The night before the occultation, I missed my shuttle bus and walked at night up into the hills, where I had my camp (of sorts). Crickets shrilled in the sagebrush, beneath the vast rush of the Milky Way.
On my return, I did get stuck in nine hours' worth of traffic, on what would normally have been a two-hour drive. Someone driving past me the other way, going east, taunted me with "there's a hundred-mile traffic jam in front of you!" The slow drive did give me the opportunity to witness some samples of landscape one normally wouldn't have time in; but it was tedious as well.
On the way back, I also stopped for dinner in
Warm Springs, Oregon. I hadn't been in that area in general in central Oregon, for a long spell.
