Texas

It is the heat that gets your attention – and pay attention because one needs to travel wisely in the late spring in Big Bend National Park, but it is the promise of evening birds and late-night dark skies that holds it. I had dropped into Lajitas, Texas, to attend a photo workshop focused on astrophotography in and around the desert, borderland park. Night photography avoids the intense heat of the day, of course, but we also explored various locations to experience the moods of this variegated landscape.

The Big Bend topography is refreshingly disorienting to me. Unlike the regular, linear pattern of the Basin and Range, the mountains of Big Bend seem circular; we travel around and into them, not over and through. Alluvial fans and consolidated pediments extend from the rugged uplands, these are familiar. The Rio Grande gasps for refreshment, barely any flow this time of year – the canyon marking the national boundary more than the river. The Chihuahuan Desert, its incessant volcanic rocks colonized with a wild diversity of arid-adapted plants and animals, is somehow sharper and coarser than our western deserts. Although the landscape is wide open, I feel like I cannot see as far. Between convoluted ridges, gunsight canyons reveal a surprise of distant ranges and mesas, verifying that the desert knows no borders.

While I am not attracted to group excursions typically, I have great friends at Muench Workshops, and their participants are like-minded and lovely to spend time with. I always learn new bits of technique, and with astrophotography, there can be unique skills to apply in the field and in image processing. I forget most of them almost immediately, but that is not for their lack of unselfish sharing and engagement. It takes practice, and more practice, but it remains so much fun.

While I gave full attention to our daily astro tutorials – we would hide away in a cool conference room during the hottest part of the day, I engaged my wanderlust during late afternoon excursions in search of birds and sunset light. I was then ready to settle in with the group to practice dark-sky compositions from blue hour to well after midnight.

Our little group moved between the mountains and canyons, dropping to the river occasionally; anything to feel the evening releasing the heat of the day. Although Wayne and Matt had locations planned, we often detoured when the light caught our attention. They picked some amazing scenes, but our focus was technique so we could have been almost anywhere in the jumble of desert spires and ridges. We practiced variations on focus-stacking, time-blending, and multiple exposures to battle the digital noise of long exposures, high-ISO settings, and heat-affected sensors. We also practiced various low-level lighting techniques to bring warmth and detail to our scenes. The field craft is a bit fiddlier than I am drawn to typically, and the files take quite a bit of patience (and computing power) to process, but the results are, or can be, amazing.

I mastered nothing on this trip, but I was reminded that improvement continues with practice. I may use few of the skills and tricks that well-practiced astrophotographers bring to their scenes, but there are landscapes and landforms in the Great Basin that I want to capture under a night sky, so I will continue to practice (special thanks to Wayne Suggs and Matt Payne). There is nothing like being under a dark sky in a desert or mountain landscape. It heals concessions we make living in cities of artificial light and constant motion, and it wakes up senses we hide from ourselves most of the time. The photos are then reminders that we should go back to the dark, occasionally, to heal and wake up.

Plus, there are birds to enjoy in the blue hour as we wait for the stars to shine.

Coordinated color. Blue Grosbeak, Los Chisos Basin, Big Bend National Park, TX, USA

Vermillion Flycatcher. Big Bend National Park, TX, USA

Mexican Jay. Big Bend National Park, TX, USA

Greater Roadrunner. Big Bend National Park, TX, USA

Morning drift. Common Nighthawk, Big Bend National Park, TX, USA

Keep going.

In memory of my nephew, Robby Young, who we lost so suddenly and too soon, while I was in Big Bend (June 2024). I did not see him enough, and I cannot see him again. But I will always have a reminder of him when under a dark sky, where the stars feel close enough to touch, even as they continue their journeys, far, far away.

For unknown reasons in 2017, I decided to skip traveling the short distance – well within my ‘easy’ travel territory – to middle Oregon for the most recent total eclipse to intersect the lower 48 of the somewhat United States. I heard great things about the experience soon after. I knew I had made a mistake, and I would not make that mistake twice.

But how to plan for the midwestern arc of totality, in between fieldwork and work in general? I have a brother in Allen, Texas, just outside totality’s path, and he had recently planned a trip to Nevada to join in a high point excursion. He was coming here for the weekend following the eclipse – my travel calendar was shrinking. Complicating things were media reports of anticipated chaos and economic opportunity – not mutually exclusive things – given the extra pressure on roads, lodging, dining, restrooms, and eye protection due to the humanity that would descend on local communities. It was going to be a mess; governors premeditated various states of emergency to fund signage and overtime for law enforcement and septic companies.

There is always a lot of conversation, around the time of any eclipse, about how supposedly primitive societies might have responded to a suddenly darkened daytime sky. Any prehistoric response, say, founding a new religion or something, certainly paled against the silly panic, angst, and warnings that poured from media outlets regarding the upcoming event – all of which had little to do with a few minutes of darkness. A sign of the times, but it made me reconsider, briefly.

I decided to make it interesting. I would forego lodging and sleep, like any real photographer. I booked a flight leaving Reno at midnight; I landed in Dallas just before sunrise on the morning of the eclipse (April 8^th) – I would be on a return flight later tonight. Bryan, my brother, picked me up, and we drove toward east TX and the path of totality. There were clouds around, but the sky looked promising. We found breakfast in Paris (TX, of course) where all the servers sported shirts and caps commemorating “Totality 2024!”. It may have been slightly more crowded than your typical Monday morning, but most folks seemed to be locals. It was clear that many businesses, along with a few opportunistic entrepreneurs, had received the news of and planned for the coming throng.

We drove on, pretty much on our own. The sky thickened as we reached the path of totality; the forecast and actual clouds in all likelihood explaining our loneliness. We consulted satellite imagery to find clear skies in Oklahoma. Left turn, mate.

Bryan guides us over the Red River, the border between the states of Texas and Oklahoma. Although the river is mostly dry today, memories flood in. This is not a random drive in unknown lands. You see, I grew up near here and basically learned to drive and, more importantly, navigate on roads just like this. I got drunk for the first time on backroads that intersect this highway, buried my truck in the Red River floodplain (not drunk), chased hot air balloons, and delivered John Deere tractors (and retrieved them for repair) driving between the small ranches and farms of northeastern Texas counties built on one-mile, checkerboard squares. The air is redolent of experiences of my 20-year-old self, and, of course, we are driving; I have not outgrown any of this.

Chasing bits of blue sky in Oklahoma, we turn into a ‘Bigfoot’ gas station and store. There are lines of outhouses, but we are the only ones here. We get a coffee and buy a ‘Totality 2024!’ sticker from a pile on the counter. Everyone is friendly and hopeful, but the clouds are building. South it is, back across the river and deeper into Texas. We eventually pierce a bubble of clear sky, and we encounter our first cluster of eclipse hunters with a smattering of tripods, cameras, and scopes. Thinking they must know what they are doing, we turn off the highway to find a lonely cemetery with an attractive and generally open cluster of trees. Land access is basically non-existent – not the vast public lands I thrive in, so small parks and cemeteries seemed our best bet. I set up two cameras, one for a time-lapse through the trees and another with the telephoto for the iconic eclipse shot. The eclipse is high in the sky here in Texas (not something I considered at length), so getting imagery that might include some landscape context is impossible. The tree canopy will have to do.

**Partial**. Concerning clouds as totality approaches, Arkansas, USA

As I took some shots for composition and focus, I could see through the viewfinder that the clouds were encroaching on us yet again. The sun disappeared soon after. Spit. Satellite imagery showed clear skies in Arkansas. Why not? North once again, mate. Now we might be driving too fast, just saying.

**Perfection corner**. A random stop at a perfect time, Arkansas, USA (Photo: Bryan Young)

We retrace a few roads and turn east, crossing two state borders in quick succession. We take a random road into a lonely, hardscrabble townsite in the Arkansas woods – a few houses and as many crumbling cars and roaming dogs as you could count. Rolling onto some dirt tracks once the houses and dogs had thinned out, I could see ‘first contact’ as the moon began its perfect transit of the sun. I immediately remembered an empty field on the opposite side of town with an open bend in the road. That would have to be it; Bryan spun us around, we waved at the occupants of a car from Florida – first car in a while, and we avoided the town dogs to get to the open field.

I was set up as soon as we stopped rolling. A lonely chimney stood in front of us, a relic of a former homestead. The clouds seemed thin enough and, maybe, becoming thinner. After all our recent hurry, we now waited. I was set with my 100-500mm lens and solar filter, and could only focus on the iconic totality image, given that the sun was partially eclipsed already, and while I liked the landscape in front of me, the sun was high above all that. We were alone with the songbirds of the adjacent woodland. Not another person or car anywhere in sight, and this was a numbered and paved roadway. It is coming.

You have seen pictures of totality, and you will see a few more here. As the day of every eclipse approaches – partial, annular, or total, the images saturate our social media and news venues. The dark round disc and its corona, maybe a ‘diamond ring’, are burned into our retinas as if we had forgotten our protective glasses during the real thing. You know what the eclipse is going to look like, but still… Totality is here.

The build-up culminates in an otherworldly tint as our surroundings become muted and the contrast of bright sun and shadow is lost. And then suddenly – especially if this is your first totality – the sun simply bursts into brilliant corona and the black hole, where the sun was seconds ago, pulls your sight into its core. The feeling only lasts a few seconds as your mind grapples to process what it is seeing – it almost makes no sense; but then logic returns to the spectacle that it is, awesome and fun, maybe, truly once-in-a-lifetime. The birds have stopped singing – although there seems to be an American Robin who thinks morning is repeating itself; crickets chime in for similar reasons apparently. It is hilarious.

I take photos, but mostly focus on enjoying the event as an experience. My new photos are not any different than the thousands (or more) that are posted everywhere – I need to plan for a foreground and some context. They are, however, mine and provide memories of our unique experience – on a quiet road in Arkansas, exulting in and laughing at the spectacle above us. I would, and may, do it again.

‘Totality’ shops and food trucks look a little forlorn as we head toward DFW airport, backtracking through Paris, and stopping in Allen for dinner with my nephews and nieces. I am on a plane toward Nevada by midnight. Thanks Bryan, it was the best of times. All in a day.

Keep going.

Desert nights in Big Bend

All in a day: Totality 2024