Nebraskaland

NEBRASKAland Aug/Sept 2017

NEBRASKAland Magazine is dedicated to outstanding photography and informative writing with an engaging mix of articles and photos highlighting Nebraska’s outdoor activities, parklands, wildlife, history and people.

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AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2017 • NEBRASKAland 55 The Day of Two Nights Get ready – Nebraska's solar eclipse is coming. By Roger Welsch Y ou want a reason to come to Nebraska? Or maybe to stay in Nebraska in August? Oh, I know what you're thinking … "Nebraska in August." Stinking hot and humid. Nothing to do. Football hasn't really started and of course there's nothing to do in Nebraska except football. And Dannebrog of all places? Puh-leez! In Dannebrog in August even the river goes away! Thanks, but no thanks. I'll be in Duluth or maybe Bangor or on Cape Cod. Ha! No you won't! And if you aren't here at noon on Aug. 21, 2017, you'll kick yourself the rest of your life. Because this will be a day with two nights. And I have it on good authority all the motels in the area will be charging double … for both nights. Because Dannebrog and a narrow ribbon across our state is Ground Zero for a total eclipse of the sun on that day. And you don't want to miss it. I was going to school in Bloomington, Indiana, in 1963 when there was a total eclipse of the sun and I was out on the commons with all the other students, tossing around a Frisbee, taking it easy, laughing off the silliness of just another natural cosmic event. Eclipse? So what? Well, I can tell you for a fact that a total eclipse of the sun is not just another natural event. It is stunning. It jars your somatic and psychic clock. A solar eclipse comes on slowly and so do the uneasy feelings. What should be nothing at all becomes something very unsettling. For one thing, the birds go dead quiet. In fact they bed down. For them it's just early night. But I was surprised to find the thousands of students around me doing the same thing, not exactly bedding down but going uncharacteristically quiet, suddenly subdued. Knowing what was going on, and that the sun would return, we just aren't used to having it go away in the middle of the day, in clear blue sky. We should have expected it would instantly get cooler, and it did, but then the wind shifted. Again, different parts of the earth in a very narrow band were shifting from summer hot to night-time cool so it should have been expected that the winds might move differently. But still, it was uncanny, just a little creepy. And the campus went dark. Some automatic lights came on. Traffic turned on their lights. Had to. It was dark! Some New Age hippie kids started to sing and chant. But mostly it was dead quiet. A strange and wonderful experience. And folks, it's coming right here to us in Dannebrog. And more. A contingent of Pawnee are coming back to the homeland for the event and for several days will be singing the old songs on the old ground. (When the Danes crossed the river right here where I write this in April of 1871, 300 Pawnee were camped where my backyard is now.) And their great-great-great grandchildren will be back to sing the ancient songs and welcome the sun from its brief but remarkable disappearance. You don't have to come to Dannebrog, however, to experience this remarkable event; the eclipse will cast a narrow strip of darkness across the entire country. But since you are already in Nebraska anyway, why not make it a Nebraska solar eclipse? I once asked master musician and National Heritage Award Winner Albert Fahlbusch why he never went to Denver or Grand Forks to visit with other hammered dulcimer makers and players; his answer has become something of a watchword of mine ever since and certainly applies here: "Why would I go somewhere else? I'm in Nebraska?!" Why indeed. This cosmic event, rare by any count, gives us a new contact with the great workings of the universe around us, what the old Pawnee called "Tawadahat" or "This Immensity." The Nebraska eclipse will remind us, like it or not, with the connection we all have with our own star, the master of our system that keeps us in orbit, gives us our seasons, our days and nights, and dramatically reminds us of how much we would miss it, even for these few moments at midday on Aug. 21, 2017. ■ Roger Welsch is an author, humorist, folklorist and a former essayist for CBS News Sunday Morning. He is the author of more than 40 books, including his most recent "Why I'm an Only Child and Other Slightly Naughty Plains Folktales" avail- able from University of Nebraska Press. o e . Old etching of Native Americans witnessing a total eclipse of the sun.

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