Total solar eclipse at Madras, Oregon
Written in August 2017.
___ Any other time, spending our wedding anniversary in a town named Madras would've been pretty special in itself. But yesterday also saw the most awe-striking moment of our lives.
___ Seconds before totality, we turned around to look at Mt. Jefferson, expecting it to disappear. It didn't — it was replaced by a majestic silhouette of itself. Then we slipped into totality, and as we took off our glasses… let's just say that that's the closest we'd ever get to experiencing a supernatural phenomenon.
___ People howled, sometimes screaming "Stars!" or "Skydivers!" I went silent after a while, staring absently at the dark pink clouds, shivering slightly in the temporary chill, but mostly just dazed senseless looking into that alien sun/moon/black-fireball/blazing-eye Thing up in the sky, and gasping.
___ The insanity ended when Shyamala yelled "Mount Jefferson!" It was re-lit. So we swivelled to look up at the Thing again, and were met with the unforgettable flash of the diamond ring.
___ What a time to be alive.
Sunset atop Mauna Kea, Hawai'i
Photographed in December 2018.
Down Creighton Mine to SNOLAB at Sudbury, Ontario
Written in March 2019.
___ The most bananas thing I've done as a scientist: take an unlit elevator ("the Cage") with 40-odd people, plummet 2 km underground* in 5 minutes — stopping briefly at the halfway point to make sure everyone is OK — , walk 2 (horizontal) kilometres on train tracks in tunnels howling with warm winds to reach SNOLAB, shower and change into lab-provided clothes, drink my first ever cup of subterranean orange pekoe tea, and get to see and learn about some of the slickest experiments on (in?) Earth, including 3 that I've done research on.
___ Thanks to Mark Chen and Joe Bramante for making this happen, and to Ian Lawson for giving me a wonderful tour.
___ * Turning on "airplane mode" on my phone was never more ironic.