7% makes all the difference.

When I was weighing the decision to take a day off from work to drive up to Idaho to see a total eclipse versus just staying here in Utah where it would be 93% of totality, I almost talked myself into the latter.

After all, 93% was much more than any of the previous partial eclipses I had viewed.  It would be almost dark.  How much difference could the last 7% make?

And I would have been so very wrong.

Even a 99% eclipse is not a total eclipse.  It's not until you get that final 1%, when finally you can remove your cardboard glasses and look directly at the sun with your naked eyes. That's right, during totality, you don't have to peer through a dark lens.

And what you see is beautiful. It's surreal. It's amazing. It's incredible. It's unreal. It's awesome. It's a marvel. You run out of words, because nothing can describe what you see and how it feels to see it. The brilliant white corona contrasts with the tar black disk blocking the sun. it's the whitest of whites and the blackest of blacks.

Before today, I never understood why people came from so far away to see a total eclipse, but now I do.

Like comparing pictures of the Grand Canyon to actually standing on the rim of that incredible canyon, so, too, photos, films, and videos of an eclipse do not begin to capture just what it's like to see one with your own eyes.

I stood along with thousands of people in a tiny town where the centerline of the eclipse path met I-15, Roberts, Idaho. Strangers who had arrived in vehicles bearing license plates from all over North America, gathered together in a county with barely 25,000 residents to share an experience which is common a regular astronomical occurrence but so rarely is as accessible as it was today.

As the moon slid into place and blocked the sun completely, reaching what astronomers call "C2," the beginning of totality, an excited roar came from the crowd of strangers and then cheers erupted along with applause in appreciation of this amazing phenomenon that we all had travelled so far to witness.

Shattering my misconception about a total eclipse, I discovered that it does not result in pitch blackness; I expected it to be completely dark during totality, like it is in the middle of the night.  Instead, it's more like the twilight of early dawn or the last moments of light that hang on well after sunset. The thing that you notice though, is that the twilight is not just in the eastern or western horizon as a sunrise or sunset would be, it's all the way around, 360 degrees, way off the distance.  It's almost unsettling.

I craned my neck and just stared in awe at the sun's shiny corona ringing the coal black disk. I smiled a giddy smile.

Then, just like that, only 150 seconds later, it was over. The moon continued its march and once again no longer blocked the entire sun.  We were back to 99%, and then 98%.

In one instant, all of the strangers who had gathered slowly in this remote place in a field and a gas station next to the interstate, left at once. What had been an orderly arrival beforehand became a mass exodus afterward, overwhelming the two lanes of the half-century old interstate. Picture your worst commute, only this one was on a road without a carpool lane, without ramp meters, and without viable alternatives, on a road where the 80 mph speed limit usually seems too slow.

Even still, despite the traffic and the relative shortness of totality, the experience of witnessing this wonderful phenomenon for the first time, left me wanting more. I must do this again. Roberts, Idaho, was my gateway drug, but now I'm craving a fix.

I've seen 100%, and I now know that 93% won't do it for me. I need that last 7%. I'll be there, for sure, in April 2024, less than seven years from now, to experience this again.