“The very hottest stars are a few tens of thousands of degrees. But when you see a total solar eclipse, that corona you witness is millions of degrees hot;  it is the hottest thing the human eye will ever see in nature.” – Sun Moon Earth, The History of Solar Eclipses from Omens of Doom to Einstein and Exoplanets, by Tyler Nordgren

To see the 2017 eclipse of the sun, I went to Wyoming. This is where our group was:  off Bridger Creek Road near Badwater Creek Road outside of Lysite WY – more or less the American outback.  Our fearless leader, a geologist, identified these red rock bands as Triassic deposits with pale limestone layers that include fossils.  There may be Eohippus fossils in there – stony remains of the dawn horse.

As the Moon began to cover the Sun, the air definitely got cool and the light weaker.  Shadows looked oddly fuzzy on one side and sharp on the other side.  The sunlight streaming through a woven straw pith helmet threw little crescents on a piece of paper.

Totality looked like sunset on every horizon.  Security lights in various directions, and a refinery that lit up like a Christmas tree, made  the point there this really wasn’t nowhere.  There were human-made structures out there. Meanwhile the Sun was a black hole in the darkened sky, surrounded by the bright, pale, corona.  The corona had structure.

The eclipse was the single most incredible astronomical sight I’ve ever seen.

It’s incredibly temporary:  a few minutes of daylight darkness in a shadow that raced across the US in 90 minutes. And total eclipses will only last for a few geological eons while the Moon exactly covers the Sun.  Long ago the Moon was nearer and covered more than the  Sun’s  disk. The glassy eyes of ancient trilobites may have seen eclipses without much corona.  Long in the future, the Moon will spiral away and cover less of the Sun.  There will be no more perfectly awesome eclipses with the bright pale crown of the sun so visible.

Eclipses seen by human eyes portended disaster to old civilizations.  Now they’re wonders without terror and signs of orbital mechanics, not the end of the world.

Right?

Well.

I returned home to Houston and then came Harvey.  By the time it hit Houston it was Tropical Storm Harvey, and wreaked great havoc.  I was lucky that all I personally lost was my car (sob!). Some people in my condo complex had two or three feet of water in their homes.  I spent the storm snug in my third-floor condo with power, water, Internet, and plenty of good food to eat.

Storm Harvey was an infinitely small disturbance in the astronomical universe.  It unfolded in less than a flicker in geological time even though it made a lasting impact crater in this city and in human lifespans. It strangely ties us to some of those Triassic fossils, I think.  A lot of the world’s fossil beds seem to have happened when a flood drowned a large number of creatures.  Floodwaters washed  them into expanses of mud where their bones fossilized and their softer body parts left impressions in sedimentary stone.

In the days after Harvey, the resurrection fern on the oaks on the Rice University campus flourished greatly.  Ferns, by the way, date back to the Devonian  period, even earlier than the Triassic.

I took these pictures while the Library was open limited hours and for Rice ID holders.  The University and the city of Houston were still reeling.  May all the other communities hit by Harvey have their own resurrection.

Snowy Egrets are elegant shore birds with plumy white feathers and black bills and legs. Bright yellow feet pattern-interrupt the elegant impression only when said feet are visible, and they’re usually below the water. However, I came along behind two Snowy Egrets at the edge of Braes Bayou when they were avidly investigating whatever goodies the recent flood had churned up, and from that perspective the Snowies looked like the business ends of Q-tips balanced on oddly angled black wires!

The last six or eight months have been remarkable for shore birds on Braes Bayou, including White Ibises and a Tricolor Heron.  For a while there was a Roseate Spoonbill in the vicinity of the Kirby Drive bridge.  Roseate Spoonbills are usually Pepto-Bismol pink;  they use their wide-tipped bills to forage in mud flats for little crustaceans, eating which makes their feathers pink.  The one on Braes Bayou looked not very pink and rather misplaced.  I’ve seen them  in tidal marshes and on Clear Creek near Galveston Bay, never this far inland.  The drought may have driven brackish water much further up the waterways than usual.

Amazing plant matter- between rains it looks as dead as long-fallen leaves;  after a rain it flourishes.  I’d wondered if this year’s drought would kill off the resurrection fern in the Rice University oak trees, but not at all!

Walking to work, I was startled by being smiled at from the branches of a tree.  It was two mylar balloons – one of them bright gold with a smiley face.  The other balloon had little smileys all over it plus the words FEEL BETTER SOON.

OK, it’s not too surprising, that close to Medical Center, to see a couple of get-well balloons on the loose. On the other hand, it was very apt because  Houston has had severe drought for a year.  Even on a prosperous residential street like Greenbriar many trees (especially magnolias) look wilted. Over in Memorial Park there are so many dead trees it looks like Agent Orange fell out of the sky. The land itself has dried out to the breaking point. Greenbriar has buckles and potholes that could wallop a small car.  And on nearby Braes Bayou the asphalt hike and bike trail developed terrible cracks over the past year.  Cracks big enough to break a jogger’s ankle or take out a bicycle.  So the city put up warning signs and outlined the cracks in white, after which they looked like a crime scene where dead bodies had lain.  Maybe the dead bodies of a year’s worth of hopes for rain.  FEEL BETTER SOON is a great wish for the trees and the rest of the natural fabric of our city.