According to the BBC, many commentators believe that yesterday’s total solar eclipse over the United States will be “the most observed, most photographed and best documented such event in human history”. It will be hard, though, for any observer to improve on Annie Dillard’s account of an eclipse she witnessed over Washington State in February 1979. First published in 1982, it was republished in full this month on the website of The Atlantic magazine, where it can be read without charge until the end of August.

If you miss your chance, you can find the piece in either of two new editions of essays by Dillard published in Britain as part of “The Canons” series by Canongate earlier this year. One of the collections (with an introduction by Geoff Dyer) is The Abundance; the other is Teaching A Stone to Talk, which I’ve mentioned already elsewhere.