I recently took a long road trip to see the solar eclipse in its totality. It wasn't a last minute thing---I'd planned it years before, agreeing with some guests at my house that we'd make the drive to Cleveland when the time came. I booked the hotel at least a year ahead (and I'm glad I did, too...there were a lot of other people traveling at the same time).

It was worth the drive, the expense, and the uncertaintly about the weather, and there we were with thousands of others at the Great Lakes Science Center on the shore of Lake Erie. A collective hush fell over the crowd when we could take off our glasses and see the chromosphere and feel the chill in the air. The sky had broken.

The experience made me realize why I'd been so eager to go see the eclipse in the first place, and it was because years ago, I'd read Annie Dillard's Teaching a Stone to Talk.

If I had to describe the genre of this unusual book, I'd say it was a collection of essays on nature. But that's not really quite it. More poetically, I'd say it's a series of brilliant meditations, intense and emotional, about such disparate subjects as an encounter with a weasel, a visit to the Galapagos Islands in Ecuador, doomed Victorian polar expeditions, angels, and (most memorably to me) the author's experience during a total eclipse in Washington State in 1979.

A partial eclipse is very interesting. It bears almost no relation to a total eclipse. Seeing a partial eclipse bears the same relation to seeing a total eclipse as kissing a man does to marrying him, or as flying in an airplane does to falling out of an airplane.

If you saw the recent eclipse, or if you didn't, or if you plan to see a future one in Australia or Iceland or Spain...I recommend Ms. Dillard's take on the experience. If you seek transcendence and beauty, and above all, awe, you may find it here.

BOOK: Teaching a Stone to Talk

AUTHOR: Annie Dillard

YEAR OF PUBLICATION: 1983

IMAGE: book cover, Harper Perennial