The Coolest Thing Ever Seen!

by Tom Shafer

November 22, 2018

So, this past fall after a round of golf with three of my buddies, a discussion ensued about the coolest things we had ever seen or done.  Now, these are two completely separate subjects, and I will definitely address the coolest thing done topic(s) at another time.  However, two of us agreed about the coolest thing we had ever seen – and we happened to have experienced it together.

But, before I get to that (what a tease!), I need to discuss some of the contenders – out of sheer respect for them.  Because of my love of travel, especially to our national parks, monuments, and historical places, I have been witness to many extraordinary sights.  Some of them are easy gets too – because they are stationary!  And, of course, if you travel to these places, you can see them as well.

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One of the most stationary places in the world, the Grand Canyon, deserves top billing.  It is completely spectacular and mesmerizing.  When I am there, I so enjoy watching people who are seeing it for the first time: mouths agape, eyes wide with wonder, child-like smiles stretching from ear to ear.  Once, when I was staying at one of the lodges on the South Rim, I sat with an older German man on a bench overlooking the canyon a couple of evenings in a row, enjoying the scenery, our discussions, and the delicious cigars he so generously offered.  On the second night, I was describing my earlier walk down to the three mile Resthouse (and its 2000 foot elevation change) on the Bright Angel Trail.  He thoroughly appreciated my description of the challenging hike and wanted to see the photographs I had taken.  As he was scrolling through pictures on my Nikon camera, I asked what he had been doing the past couple of days.  He responded, “Me?  I have been sitting on this bench for three days now.  I occasionally get up to walk along the rim and get a bite to eat, but I always come back to this bench.”  When pressed to explain why he was sitting in this one place, he replied, “I will never be here again.  When I go back to Germany, I want to remember this beautiful vantage point.  Now, I have memorized this view and will be able to recall it until my dying day.”  My daily hikes along the rim and down into the canyon paled in comparison to the masterpiece he was painting inside his brain.

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Other can’t-miss, jaw-dropping stationary places in America include the following: anywhere along Trail Ridge Road in Rocky Mountain National Park; the Teton Range in Grand Teton NP; Yosemite Valley in Yosemite NP; Wild Goose Island on Saint Mary Lake in Glacier NP; and, the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone punctuated by the poorly-named Lower Falls in Yellowstone NP.  The great thing about these places is that they are all singular sights contained within the magnificent beauty of five of our most iconic national parks.

Extraordinary animal sightings can make an appearance on the list of cool things seen, and for animal lovers, these might be the winners.  And, I have been privileged to witness more than a few extraordinary sightings: a mountain lion bathing in her den in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument along the Mexican border in Arizona, another stalking me along a ridge just below Middle Teton Mountain in Grand Teton NP; a mother moose nursing her two babies in the middle of Ditch Creek near the Snake River, also in Grand Teton; a grizzly bear grazing on a hillside (at closer range than I would have preferred) on the Avalanche Peak trail near Sylvan Lake in Yellowstone NP; and, an American bison that walked within a foot of the camp chair I was sitting on near Hayden Valley, also in Yellowstone.

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I’ll admit that all of those are pretty cool, but one animal experience actually shames them.  Back in 2006, I drove father-in-law Richard Seifried to a Western Writers Conference in Cody, Wyoming – and of course, we turned this event into a full-fledged National Park camping extravaganza.  Richard had worked for the Park Service for a number of years, so he didn’t really get much of an opportunity to visit the parks he wasn’t working in.  And, he had some bucket list items he needed to check off.  One of these was seeing wolves in Yellowstone.  He had seen the smaller gray wolves in Isle Royale NP, Michigan, when he was younger, but being a real wolf lover, he wanted to see them in the wide open wilderness of Wyoming.  So, we made that a high priority for the trip.

Having done a bit of research, we knew that two valleys, Hayden and Lamar, sustained the two largest wolf packs in Yellowstone.  We agreed to camp near Canyon Village because it was halfway between them.  Though it was mid-June, the temperatures were dropping into the low teens at night, so we knew that we were going to be dealing with cold weather viewing.  We decided that on one morning, we would concentrate our energies on one valley, then move to the other valley the next day.  We had heard from park rangers that visitors had recently seen wolves up in Lamar, so we started there.

Upon waking to a bone-chilling 12°, I fixed a quick breakfast of bacon and eggs – and lots of steaming hot coffee, then we headed up to Lamar.  I found a place along the road to pull off, and we walked down a little trail to a rocky viewing area that I had visited on a prior trip.  We sat there for several very cold hours, spying marmots, a couple of coyotes, several mule deer, and a small herd of elk (wolf bait!), but no wolves revealed themselves.  We then headed off to take in a few of the more reliable sights, namely Old Faithful geyser and some of the other thermal features in that area of the park.  As we sat very near our campfire that evening, we expressed disappointment at not seeing wolves that morning, but were also thankful for experiencing a dramatic sunrise over the beautiful Lamar Valley.  We were hopeful that Hayden would provide the wolves that Richard so desperately wanted to see.

A freshly purchased propane tent heater made night two much more tolerable, and after a quick warming fire and coffee fill-up, we headed down to Hayden Valley.  Though the sky was lightening, it was still quite dark when we set up at a little viewing area we had chosen the previous afternoon.  Though we couldn’t see it, we could hear activity just beyond the Yellowstone River about a quarter of a mile away.  Crows were cawing enthusiastically, and a low grunting sound was emanating through the gloaming.  Occasionally, the low grunting would morph into a snarl or growl, and it was then that I knew we were listening to a bear.

Dramatically, the sun finally cast light upon the scene: a large male grizzly was snout-deep in the belly of dead elk while a murder of crows pranced and cackled around the kill zone.  We were struck with wonder!  And, as daylight continued to grow, the scene did too.  Two young coyotes were circling the dead elk, yipping and yammering, trying to distract the grizzly from his work – but to no avail.  The bear continued to rip and tear at the carcass, his entire head soaked red with the elk’s blood.  The crows hopped about, braver ones attempting to snatch small pieces of this fortuitous gift.  All the while, the grizzly kept at his task, occasionally roaring his disapproval at the birds and coyotes.

For almost an hour, our eyes were glued to nature’s brutal truth: for some mammals to live, others have to die.  It is rare for a grizzly to kill a full-sized elk.  They tend to target elk calves and other similar sized fauna.  So, if the bear did bring down this elk, the elk must have been injured or already nearing the end of its life expectancy.

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But back to our scene.  At about the one hour mark, the grizzly, now engorged with fresh elk meat, slowly sauntered away into the tree line – and the crows and coyotes pounced!  For several minutes, they battled for their respective turns at the table, the coyotes pulling and grasping at the flesh while the crows pecked away at the internal organs.  Like the grizzly, the heads of these animals were quickly painted red as they worked.

Very suddenly, the coyotes stopped, ears perked, and simultaneously shifted their attentions south down the valley.  We directed our own attentions that way as well, but initially saw nothing.  The coyotes, though, were transfixed.  They were definitely staring at something.  Then, I saw a flash of movement.  Perhaps three quarters of a mile away, walking slowly across the hillside just above the Yellowstone River, a large black wolf was glowering back at the coyotes.  In just that moment, the two young coyotes sprang up from the elk carcass and dashed due north away from their foe.  The wolf broke into a slow jog – but the coyotes were gone, they too now deep into the tree line.  Of course, the wolf had no interest in chasing a couple of young coyotes, especially when an easier meal was a short distance away.

Richard broke into the biggest smile I’d ever seen.  The crows, in deference to the king of Yellowstone, flew into some nearby trees as the wolf ambled up to dead elk.  For the next forty-five minutes, he satisfied his hunger while we gawked appreciatively.  His strength and power were evident as he easily tore flesh from the elk.  Occasionally he would rest, closely guarding his breakfast as the crows squawked from above.  At some point, the wolf reached his fill, and he too promenaded back up to the tree line, now acting like a stage curtain in a play, and disappeared.

As Richard and I looked at one another, I became aware that we hadn’t spoken in a couple of hours.  And, glancing up toward the road, I also became aware that we weren’t alone – dozens of people (and their cars) were stopped, they too relishing a scene they would likely never see again.  Our hungry bellies begging for sustenance, we called it a morning and decided to head back to Canyon Village for warmth and breakfast.  Richard could check yet another bucket item off his list.  As I always tell people who are visiting Yellowstone for the first time, the Serengeti of North America never fails to disappoint.

So I’ve provided two different coolest things ever seen, one stationary feature, the other an animal drama.  I suppose I could regale you with a weather story, but I really can’t.  I have witnessed (and chased) several funnel clouds and tornadoes (Ohio, West Virginia, Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming), and though cool, I just can’t add the –est to any of them.  And, I have observed the aurora borealis (northern lights) on a few occasions (Montana, Ontario, Maine, and Ohio – slightly!), but they too pale in comparison to my number one.  So, without any further ado, it’s time to drop number one – and definitely not number two.

In August of 2017, a solar eclipse was scheduled to bisect our country (okay, so there was no way to create a dramatic reveal here).  In Dayton, Ohio, we were going to experience 89% of total.  In doing a little research about places that would experience totality, I found a website called eclipse2017.org that proclaimed, “A partial eclipse is boring!”  I already knew this to be true.

When I was a child, partial solar eclipse mania struck (the haircut I was sporting suggests it was 1970, research confirms it).  I remember hearing about it from my elementary school teachers – in art class, we even made (and decorated!) our own viewing devices by not-so-ingeniously utilizing a pair of paper plates.  The actual day of that eclipse was a Saturday in March (two weeks before my birthday), and I know I was excited.  People talked about how dark it would get and how wildlife might be confused.  So, around noon (the designated starting time) on March 7, 1970, I grabbed my viewing device – er, two paper plates – and headed outside to a beautiful, early spring day.  I oriented one part of my viewing device – the paper plate with a pin prick in it (surrounded by a Peanuts scene with Snoopy and Charlie Brown), over part two of my viewing device – a blank paper plate.  With a drum roll rat-a-tatting across my brain, I scanned the blank, white surface eagerly and saw, near the center, a bright yellow dot.  As I looked closer, it was still a bright yellow dot.

My dad came outside, and noting my disappointment, explained that the event was just starting and that I should check back every fifteen minutes.  So, with annoying kid patience, I checked back every couple of minutes, but the bright yellow dot was not changing.

Around 12:30, I noticed a slight alteration to the dot; something was nibbling on it.  At 1:00, about a quarter of the dot was missing, but the rest of the world looked pretty normal.  By 1:15, half of yellow dot was gone, and yet, birds and animals were doing nothing out of the ordinary.  At 1:30 (at a maximum of almost 80% of totality), three-quarters of my dot were gone – and my neighborhood looked exactly as it had when I first came outside.  Dad announced that the eclipse had reached totality, that this was as “dark” as it was going to get.

What a rip off (‘70s kidspeak)!!

What a waste of two perfectly good paper plates (except the cool Peanuts art)!

Disillusionment doesn’t adequately describe my disposition.  I had wasted half (in kid time) of a perfectly beautiful spring day staring a yellow dot on a paper plate.  And for what, to watch more than half of it disappear?  This wasn’t a Mark Wilson magic trick (famous magician of my youth) – not even close!

On the evening news, reporters in Mexico revealed what a TOTAL total eclipse looked like: darkness, punctuated by more darkness.  Frogs could be heard croaking, katydids filled the air with their chirping.  Birds were said to be roosting (though the evening news provided no evidence of this).  Those Mexicans were so lucky!!

That was my first eclipse experience – and frankly not a very good one.  So, as the 2017 event neared, I vowed to myself that I was going to find a way to be in the Cone of Darkness.

Early in the 2017 summer, I conveyed to my buddies that it would be fun (and convenient!) to be on a golf course during the eclipse.  They agreed, but most of them were content to be on a golf course in the Dayton area.  That wasn’t going to be good enough for me (based on my prior experience), so I texted them information (golf courses and lodging) about a number of Kentucky and Tennessee locales that would experience 100% totality.  Early in the summer, lodging prices were relatively normal in all of these areas, but as the days ticked by, those numbers started going up.  I did my best to lure them with really good golf courses and/or cool cities (like Nashville, TN).  But, none of them were biting, instead summoning a variety of excuses (too many people, it’s probably going to be disappointing, what if it rains?).  These were all valid points, but I was determined to go, even if I had to go by myself.

One month before eclipse date (August 21), I finally decided that Nashville was my venue of choice.  Motel prices had not spiked there yet, so I grabbed a room at the Renaissance Nashville Hotel downtown for two nights (definitely wanted to be within walking distance of some live music!).  Though I was disappointed that I might be going alone (BTW, my wife was unavailable due to responsibilities at her work), I was definitely excited that my plan was solidified.

About a week later and after a round of golf with my regular group, someone introduced the eclipse to our discussion.  I reiterated my Nashville strategy – which, of course, they were hearing for the first time – even though I had told the three of them this strategy at least three other times.  Because it was NOW important to them, they were finally HEARING it.  Friend-hearing rant aside, two of them still weren’t convinced that they wanted to get in “the zone,” but Bilbo (an alias, but close) was definitely interested, and so was his twin brother Frodo (another alias), who happened to live in Kentucky near the line of totality.  Though I was excited about the prospect of a Music City eclipse, witnessing it with a couple of friends more than made up for it.

So, we had a new plan: Bilbo and I would drive down to Frodo’s house in Danville on Sunday, then drive over to Mineral Mound Golf Course near Eddyville in far western Kentucky to catch the eclipse on Monday.

Since I had been thinking about this celestial moment for much of the year, I felt I was quite prepared for it.  I had already purchased special viewing glasses (20 pair of the cheap paper ones for friends and family, 1 nice GQ-style pair for myself) and #14 welding glass to place over my Nikon camera to snap off a few pictures during the event.  Before heading south, I handed out glasses to all of the slackers – er, friends and family – who had waited too long to purchase their own (of course, making me even more heroic than usual).

I won’t bore you (any more than I already have) with details about our drive down to Danville, then the drive over to Mineral Mound State Park (where the golf course was located).  But I will tell you that we had a nice evening of beers (me) and wine (Bilbo and Frodo) on Sunday evening, and that the three hour drive to Eddyville was surprisingly uneventful.  We had expected very heavy traffic in Western Kentucky, but apparently everyone was already there and in place.  Consequently, we arrived at the golf course two full hours before our one o’clock tee time, so we hung out on a very hot, very sunny patio staying beerdrated and mentally preparing for a round of golf that was going to include darkness and a long-expected solar event.

And we weren’t alone.  Because it is a state park, Mineral Mound was packed with people.  The park is perched on Lake Barkley, a body of water created by the dammed Cumberland River, and boats were visible for as far as the eye could see.  Other people had pulled their cars into any place resembling a parking area, and were setting up lawn chairs and beach umbrellas for the big affair.

And, at high noon, the affair was on – well, at least a partial affair.  Donning solar glasses, Bilbo, Frodo, and I craned our necks back and stared directly at ole Sol.  A little sliver of the sun was being obscured by our moon – and this was a far better way than paper plates to witness it!  We continued looking at the sun frequently as the moon continued to hide more and more of it.  By 12:30, about half of the sun was gone, and dark smudges on its surface suggested visibility of at least a couple of transient sunspots – areas of the sun that are slightly cooler (6000°F) than the rest (10,000°F).  Our excitement was now palpable!

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Eventually, with our tee time looming (just a little after one o’clock), we headed to the practice green to get in a few putts, then made our way to the first tee.  The eclipse itself seemed to be moving even faster, and we realized that totality might actually occur as we were playing our first hole, a 525 yard par five that doglegs left along Lake Barkley.  More than three-quarters of the sun had disappeared as we hit our tee shots in what seemed to be full light, but as we walked to our balls, it was obvious that light was waning.  Pulling out our glasses, we could see that totality was imminent, so we hit our second shots (now in a twilight) knowing that the full eclipse would occur before we could hit our approach shots into the green.

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And that’s exactly what happened.  By the time we reached our golf balls, the event was full on!  I pulled on my glasses, plopped down on the ground, and grabbed my camera and welding glass from my golf bag.  Totality was going to last about two minutes and forty seconds, so time was of the essence.  I recognized immediately that I wasn’t as prepared as I thought, and realized (unfortunately) that I hadn’t practiced working this glass with my camera.  I snapped a couple of awkward pictures, then gave up the effort.  I wanted to see this spectacular solar moment with my own two eyes.

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And spectacular it was!  Words just can’t adequately describe the scene – yet I will try (and pictures don’t do it justice either).  Though darkness wasn’t total, brighter stars were plainly visible and sounds of nocturnal creatures could be heard coming from the lake – along with human hoots and howls from the boats, and Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon” blasting from several speakers!  The sky had taken on a deep blue hue along the horizon, but directly overhead it was pitch black.  The sun’s corona, its outer atmosphere, was clearly evident, and just as the eclipse neared its end, a solar flare rose off the surface of the upper right quadrant.  Then, as the sun began to emerge, Bailey’s Beads appeared (“beads” of light that emanate along the edges of the mountainous lunar surface at the eclipse’s beginning and end), followed quickly by the diamond ring effect in the lower left quadrant.  With that, the “total” part of the eclipse was over.

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Bilbo, Frodo, and I looked at one another – and we may have blurted at the same time, “That was the coolest thing EVER!!!”  Once again cognizant that we were on a golf course, we hit our approach shots and continued our round, frequently stopping to pull out glasses, checking progress of the eclipse as it finished its work.  Of course, we persisted in discussion about what we had witnessed, but we also had to focus on our golf games.  We did enjoy the cute state park course, now made even more memorable because of what we experienced while playing it (and one of us managed to shoot a tidy 76 despite the otherworldly distraction!).

Now, I could finish here, but a postscript is necessary.  After our round, rather than enjoy a celebratory beer, we decided to get on the road for the three hour drive back to Danville.  We thought that perhaps because we had been on the golf course for more than four hours, we might not experience the immense traffic jam that had been predicted.  But, we were wrong.  As soon as we reached the Western Kentucky Parkway, we knew that its name was oh so appropriate – it was definitely a “park” way.  Counting a one hour stop at a nice Mexican restaurant in Central City, it took us seven and a half very slow hours to make our way back to Bilbo’s house.  However, as we crawled across Kentucky, we agreed that witnessing the eclipse was worth any driving pain we had to endure.

Well, there you go, the coolest thing I’ve ever seen.  Fortunately, another total eclipse is coming soon – well, soon enough anyway – so you’ll get another opportunity to experience the Cone of Darkness.  And, if you happen to live local (as in the Dayton area), you won’t have to go far.  In fact, for me, on Monday, April 8, 2024, my present home between Xenia and Yellow Springs will experience two full minutes of totality, and some nearby locales will enjoy four minutes!   To help my fellow celestial citizens for that event, a twelve by twelve plot in my backyard is a going for a mere $100 a night right now (two night minimum).  That number will definitely go up after the first of the year.

Oh, and to wet or whet (reader’s choice) your cosmological whistle now, on January 20, 2019, all of America will experience a total lunar eclipse for one full hour starting at 11:41 p.m. (penumbral duration from 9:36 p.m. to 2:48 a.m.).  I guess I can’t gouge – er, help – my fellow man on that evening.

Maybe that lunar event will be your coolest thing ever seen – until 2024!!

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