Totality's eerie light bathes the ring of massive monoliths while robed figures chant and burn their sacrificial offerings. Around them, the gathered throngs raise their voices in joy and smile for the cameras of the CBS Evening News. It is 1979, and the scene is a bizarre roadside re-creation of Stonehenge overlooking the Columbia River in western Washington state. Neo-pagans and curious onlookers have amassed to witness the rare event unfolding overhead, and this being Washington (and the 1970s), it's clear that not all the smiles and good vibrations are due solely to the solar eclipse.
Back in the studio, Walter Cronkite tells us there will not be another total solar eclipse to touch the continental United States this century. Not until the far-off date of 2017 will totality once more be so visible to so many on this continent.
I've been waiting to see this eclipse ever since.
The Feb. 26, 1979, eclipse only touched a corner of the U.S. before swinging up into western Canada, and not even half of today's Americans were alive for it. A continent-spanning eclipse hasn't occurred in the U.S. since 1918, almost 100 years before what is being called the Great American Eclipse of 2017. When the current drought of 38 years without a total solar eclipse ends in 2017, it will mark the beginning of a new 38-year period in which Americans will get to see five (in 2017, 2024, 2044, 2045 and 2052).
Over time, these cycles of bounty and absence come and go, and every place on Earth is crossed eventually. For human beings, with our limited lives and limited means of travel, these vagaries of celestial alignment mean the majority of people on Earth have never seen a total solar eclipse.
