Dark times ahead

And apparently thousands are coming to witness it

Once upon a time I had to serve in a chaperone-ish capacity for my youngest son’s Boy Scout unit (Troop? Pack? Gang? OK, probably not gang) on a camping trip.

To be honest, that’s not exactly my thing. For one, you have to go outside where there are snakes and bears and sharks (OK, in this case at least, probably not sharks). And for another, part of this excursion was going to be spent exploring a cave.

A footnote: I’m 6’2” and don’t bend all that well. And while my idea of cave exploration involves tour guides, lights, golf carts and the generally unexercised option to buy walnut bowls (maybe that’s just a thing you see on the way to St. Louis), this particular adventure involved playing Twister while heading for a space about the size of a department store dressing room.

Yes, I could have passed on this and spent my time safeguarding the opening of this alleged cave from snakes, bears and sharks (I definitely would have been able to keep the sharks out). But I didn’t take a pass. Mostly because I didn’t know that was an option.

When I did bend myself into positions not native to me or my body type and join the rest of the Scouts in the World’s Smallest Cave, I got to hear the guide tell us we should all turn off our headlamps so we could experience total darkness.

I thought to myself “or I could just close my eyes.” Maybe a sense of wonder at the natural world hadn’t quite moved me at that point.

I mention this in part because I still periodically wake up in a cold sweat wondering what would have happened if none of our headlamps had come back on. Yes, I know, unlikely. But I was worried about sharks, so any possibility is on the table for me. I also mention it because in a few weeks, the Lovely Mrs. Smith and I are going to head down to the Arkansas River Valley (or some Arkansas River Valley-adjacent location) to see the Most Amazing Eclipse in the History of Eclipses — at least among the eclipses that have thrown shade on any part of Arkansas.

From every indication, we won’t be alone. People who make a living evaluating this sort of thing estimate huge crowds will travel to Russellville, which to some degree appears to be viewed as the Arkansas epicenter of eclipse watching.

It would be far too snide of me to make the cheap and easy joke that Russellville may actually be at its best in total darkness. Hey, they’ve got Feltner’s Whatta-Burger and they’re right next to Dardanelle, a town with a high school mascot known as the Sand Lizard, which has the advantage of being both incredibly goofy and impossible to be offended by. So, they’ve got that going for them. Which is nice.

All that notwithstanding, it appears we may in fact see hordes descend on the county seat of Pope County, a town that up until the eclipse would have been famous for being right next to the final resting place of “True Grit’s” Rooster Cogburn (man, Dardanelle is getting all the good stuff). If, of course, Rooster Cogburn had been real.

In response, Russellville is rolling out the red carpet and jacking up the prices on hotels and short-term rentals. Hey, you gotta make it while you can. The most recent eclipse visibility in Russellville happened in 2017, and the last before that was 100 years before.

Again, though snide, cheap and easy jokes about going to Russellville and having to pay to stay there are, well, too snide, cheap and easy.

And it is also worth noting that the hordes descending will be paying for the privilege of looking at something you technically can’t actually look at — at least not without some version of welder’s glasses, designed to make you even better looking than you are right now.

So, to recap, for the second time in my life (three is a trend, they tell me), I’m traveling to see something that will look amazingly like what would happen if I just closed my eyes. Or went outside at night.

On the other hand, it will be a nice road trip. We’ll actually be on our way to Hot Springs (also, apparently smack dab in the middle of prime eclipse country), so while I may not always be able to see the sun, I can see horse racing and barbeque.

No welder’s glasses required.