I didn’t want to drive to Wyoming with 200,000 other hearty souls, so we stayed at home for the eclipse. Here in Denver our image would be about 92.5 percent of a total eclipse and I decided that would be good enough for me.

As the shadow of the moon began to consume the sun, the day dimmed, little by little. We were using a pinhole camera made from a box. Yes, there was the tiny circle with the tiny partial shadow. And then we looked at the sidewalks.

The closely-spaced tree leaves overhead created small holes, and astronomer bugs had gnawed holes in some of those leaves. The sidewalks were teeming, burgeoning, bubbling with images of the sun made smaller by growing shadows of the moon. We were surrounded by an infinite number of eclipses, and the resulting landscape–moonscape–sunscape showed a new universe at out feet.

It was amazing. It was science. It was magic.