A Muslim, a Jew, and a Christian walk into a bar. Our friends are right behind us. Actually, it’s more of a trickling in, really, and we probably aren’t in that order at all… I think I messed up the punchline.

Let’s back up! It’s 2017. An ardent astronomy enthusiast – dare I say, zealot? – looks to the stars and begins planning his expedition to witness totality. Some six and a half years later, I am fortunate enough to be invited along for the ride. With Arpit as our fearless leader, we pile into two cars and trek up to Quebec. We set up homebase at our AirBnB, deftly selected by our Ahab: a modern home finished with granite and accented by mahogany-tones. We can’t spend too much time admiring the place, though. We have a train to catch.

The most difficult task of the trip turns out to be finding parking at Stationnement Panama. Arpit and his passengers watch my car rove around the parking lot for the third time. The French language sure loses its luster when imprinted on an “Employee Parking Only” sign. I tell myself not to resent electric vehicles just because they get extra parking spots. They’re so important for our planet and future. So, so, so important. Mmmmmmm. I hate them.

I soon realize how misplaced that feeling is when I first encounter the réseau express métropolitain, Greater Montreal’s automated light rail system. You could eat off the floor of this train, at least before you’d want to touch a car on the T with your bare hands. If this is what public transit can be, who wants a car? I am transformed into a NUMTOT, enjoying New Urbanist Memes for Transit-Oriented [Twenty-Six-Year-Olds]. That’s what it stands for, right?

We grab dinner and drinks at a nearby pub. The stunningly beautiful hostess asks me how many people are in my party, and I have to, er, uhhhhh, turn around and count. Before I can recover, an angel of a bartender greets me with bonjour! and I sputter out more uhhhhhhh. In retrospect, maybe French isn’t so bad. We end the evening regaling each other with tales of this tavern’s burger’s ecstasy.

The next day seems to pass in a flash. From Monument à Paul de Chomedey, sieur de Maisonneuve, a statue commemorating Montreal’s founder, we gaze up at Basilique Notre-Dame and listen to the otherworldly harmonies of street performer Curtis Thorpe. He hammers away The Weeknd’s Blinding Lights on his stringed dulcimer. A walk by the waterfront gives way to the Biodôme, a zoo shaped like a bubble, and Memorial Nadia Comăneci Montreal, a monument dedicated to the story of the first perfect 10 in Olympic gymnastics history. A group picture is suggested. Naimur offers to take a picture of the other five of us. No, no, we tell him. We will take a ‘group’ picture of you. From five different angles, we photograph our confused but amused companion.

And suddenly, it’s Monday. We’re at Centre de la nature, a park which provides us the perfect balance between witnessing the eclipse and swerving the crowds. The late afternoon is warm, the sky is clear, and we’re ready for the moon to obscure the sun. We know what to expect. All we’ve read in the news these past couple days is what the eclipse will be like. As the moon first crosses in front of the sun, we start joking about what the stupid animals are going to do when it gets dark. 

And then it does.

The world isn’t supposed to look like this. At sunset, the world’s light fades in a predictable pattern our brains understand. This? It’s as if someone is slowly pulling down the dimmer switch that lights the world. It’s subtle at first, but as less and less light gets past the moon, it’s clear that something is Wrong. The subconscious screams, “Wake up!”; the lizard brain screeches, “Run!” But there is nowhere to run. There is only the coming darkness, which seizes upon all light in the form of a shadow rushing across the sky. Timed with its motion, the park’s attendees wail, our sound’s crescendo landing with darkness’ cover. This is totality.

“Take off your glasses,” an app on Arpit’s phone chirps. This is the moment I remove my 3D-glasses to discover it’s all real. I am entranced by celestial beauty. Above me hangs the ultimate symbol of cosmic alignment, a moon sized exactly proportionate to its distance from the sun. The word awestruck can only do this experience justice through the full weight of its seventeenth century etymology: overwhelmed by reverential fear. Compared to all that is, I am too small to be real.

And then, it’s peace. Peace enough to appreciate the band of sunset wrapping around the horizon and the halo surrounding this dark, unfamiliar thing in the sky. Protruding from the bottom now is a scarlet thread that wisps around the bend, ferocious as it is gentle. Light and dark, space and time, chaos and order. I wish this union of things that are and aren’t could last forever.

But it can’t! Not even four minutes, it turns out. We depart, grateful for every second that Arpit fought for in searching for a location. The rest of the trip seems to end as abruptly as the eclipse itself. We leave the next day to avoid the thirteen hour traffic jam. We don’t separate before indulging in ice cream at Ben & Jerry’s, of course – it’s mandatory when passing through Vermont. I walk away with a renewed spirit, enthusiastic that someday soon, humanity will watch an eclipse together as one human race. We’ll just need to mind the traffic on the way home – I hear it gets pretty rough.