The total solar eclipse transfixed the nation – News from Journal World

WESTMINSTER, South Carolina — When I was a little kid, I loved the sky. I loved it for its bigness, for the endless feeling it evoked.

When you’re a kid, the daytime sky is like a movie screen. Clouds were characters caught in an epic, endless drama. The night sky was even grander: an eyepiece into the infinite; a great black canvas upon which to project light, imagination, and color.

Time has a way of shrinking things. As a child, I dreamt of becoming an archaeologist, artist, writer, philosopher, and scientist. It’s a cliché, but the future was full of untold, endless possibilities. Time taught me what was realistic. It made me choose. Life becomes smaller; even the sky shrinks away. The nighttime stars shining start to seem a little less extraordinary, a little less new.

The total solar eclipse transfixed the nation – News from Journal World