When I experienced my first total solar eclipse seven years ago, it was so overwhelmingly awesome that I resolved to make it to the next one in North America, due on April 8, 2024. Its path across the U.S. will run from the sourthwest border of Texas to the eastern edge of Maine, so my plan was to start driving from the Pacific Northwest a week in advance, adjusting my course daily toward whatever region promised clear skies. I thought I might end up somewhere in Texas, but a high probability of cloudy skies ruled that out, along with most of the other states except perhaps northern New England (too far) and some stretches from southern Missouri to central Indiana (too unspecific). So I abandoned my quest. Why drive 2000 miles to watch a cloud get dark? I can do that at home.
I was relieved in a way. The idea of a demainding road trip right after the exhausting rigors of Holy Week did verge on madness. And I have thoroughly enjoyed catching up on sleep and reading this Easter Week. But come Monday, I’m sure I will be visited by the demons of regret and envy. I do hate missing out.
In the instant of the sun’s vanishing in 2017, my first thought was, “Why did it take me so many decades to see this breathtaking phenomenon?” A few minutes later, when the light began to return, I thought, “When’s the next one?” And even if I never see another eclipse, the two minutes of pure wonder in between those thoughts will live in me forever.
To all of you fortunate enought to be in the path under a cloudless sky on Monday. I wish you a totality of amazement. There is nothing else in Nature so uniquely sublime. After seeing the 2017 eclipse, I wrote a piece about its effect on the senses and the soul, with the help of Dante, John Donne, Henry Vaughan, and Michelangelo Antonioni. In a decade of blogging (yesterday marked the tenth anniversary of The Religious Imagineer), it has been my most popular post. You can read it at the following link:
The religious imagineer 
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To your point about clouds, Yours Truly planned to attend the P. Dan Britain Memorial in West Fork (near Fayetteville, AR) and sing from the Sacred Harp and Missouri Harmony for two days before the event. I was advised to drive south, but wished I had followed my own instincts to head north and east toward the zone of totality, a town called Jasper. Reminiscent of the Revelation of John, right? Walls of Jasper, if I’m not mistaken. As it was, a town named Mulberry was in the 30-second (not very dark for very long, but in totality) and I found a fallow field and a far-flung family who came from St. Louis to experience this phenomenon. On the way back, listening to people in the darkest part of the path wax rhapsodic about their feelings was every bit as joyous as the actual moment. My philosophy was, if I miss the event due to clouds or rain, at least I had the memory of singing. I was not disappointed on either count. My Minutes book is marked for the next time.
Rain came the next day. The viewing was good, thanks be to God.