Kurt Nauck

When I first heard that a total solar eclipse would cross the USA in August 2017, I knew I had to see it. These things don’t happen every day, and for all I knew, this might be my best (and possibly only) opportunity to witness what some consider to be the grandest spectacle of nature. It would mean a 12 hour drive (one way), but I reckoned it a small price to pay for the experience of a lifetime.

A couple of weeks before the event, I received word of a significant business opportunity in St. Louis, a location just on the northern edge of the path of totality. The die was cast and plans were made. 

Other than heading towards my business meeting, I had no particular eclipse viewing destination in mind – as far as I was concerned, one place was as good as another so long as I was close to the centerline. GPS sent me north through Texarkana, Little Rock and Memphis, and the day before the eclipse I arrived in a small town I’d never heard of: Carbondale, Illinois.

Weather conditions were favorable, and my traveling companion and I found a bank parking lot on the outskirts of town where we settled in for the show. Little did I know that this brief experience would consume much of my time and attention over the next several years, nor could I have known how large a role Carbondale would play in my journey.

It didn't take long to discover that two additional eclipses would cross America within the next seven years. And the more I studied, the more it appeared that the event I had witnessed that bright (and then dark, and then bright again) August day might have been much more than a mere once-in-a-lifetime astronomical event. As information slowly trickled in, a story began to unfold. But it became abundantly clear that I would have to begin the tedious process of separating fact from fiction if I truly wished to get to the bottom of it.

Welcome to my journey.