It will make the eclipse so much better if you read this first: Annie Dillard on witnessing a total solar eclipse in Washington State, near Yakima, in 1979. She and her husband pull their car over, climb a hill by the side of the highway, and just sat there among a bunch of other hills, each covered in clumps of strangers. Then the shadow of the moon hits them, traveling 1,800 miles an hour.

From all the hills came screams. A piece of sky beside the crescent sun was detaching. It was a loosened circle of evening sky, suddenly lighted from the back. It was an abrupt black body out of nowhere; it was a flat disk; it was almost over the sun. That is when there were screams. At once this disk of sky slid over the sun like a lid. The sky snapped over the sun like a lens cover. The hatch in the brain slammed. Abruptly it was dark night, on the land and in the sky. In the night sky was a tiny ring of light. The hole where the sun belongs is very small. A thin ring of light marked its place. There was no sound. The eyes dried, the arteries drained, the lungs hushed. There was no world.

I'm going to cut it off there, but it's intense. Annie Dillard is a genius. A fact you may not know, that this essay describes: Emperor Louis of Bavaria saw a total solar eclipse in the year 840 and "died of fright on the spot."

Read it and share it with the people you love, and hold them tight when the lights go out.