Nearly 13, Ally Summers has a passion for astronomy. She has always been homeschooled. Her parents, both scientists, agreed 10 years earlier to leave their native Chicago to start a remote campsite called Moon Shadow Campgrounds in New England. The camp provides them the opportunity to collect astronomical data impossible to gather amidst the light pollution in the city. For the past three years, the family—including Ally and her younger brother, Kenny—have prepared the camp for the flood of tourists expected at Moon Shadow to observe a total solar eclipse, the first visible in mainland America in 75 years.

Ally manages the camp’s six signature recreational sites, which she calls The Unusuals. There is the Labyrinth, a series of massive concentric circles made from stones. The Labyrinth challenges visitors to follow the circles to the center and there ask a big, difficult question about their life and, in turn, receive an answer. There is a site along a shallow river where campers pan for gold (her brother periodically stocks the river with tiny gold nuggets); there is the Art House, a cabin where kids paint on the walls; Alien Central, where campers listen in on astronomical equipment sweeping the skies for any radio signal that might indicate extraterrestrial life; the Sun Garden, with a giant sundial; and the Star Garden, where guests scan the night skies using a battery of telescopes.