Magical. Almost supernatural, and yet Nature at its most astounding. In an instant, the world was turned inside out. The blazing corona around the darkened sun took my breath away. (And this was viewing through a thin layer of cloud. I can only imagine if the sky had been clear.) Just before totality, the horizon glowed with a 360-degree sunset. The air turned cold. Transcendent might not be too strong a word for the feeling when the sun winked out and the corona appeared.
This was my first-ever experience of a total eclipse. (Once, in the 70s, I was on the wrong side of a half-mile band of ocean separating me from the view of totality. Sorry, man, what a bummer.) It made totally worthwhile getting up at 3 a.m. to drive—ahead of the rush of thousands of others from Massachusetts—to Burlington, Vermont to watch the event. We arrived plenty early and found parking. We had the Mothership, and our dog McDuff, and we relaxed in comfort while we waited. Well, aside from shortness of sleep. But you can sleep when you’re dead, man.
The closest I have come to this in the past was our viewing in person of the launch of space shuttle Atlantis, in 2010, along with a group of fellow SF authors. In that event, the most memorable single element was the nova-like blaze of fire under the tail of the spaceship. That, like this, could not be conveyed by a photograph, much less my amateur video. In this case, I couldn’t even get a picture that registered what we were seeing at all.
Here’s a NASA photo from Dallas, TX, that did a better job (NASA/Keegan Barber):
When I watched the shuttle launch, I was in spine-tingling awe of the power of human striving against the bonds of the Earth. In this case, I was in transcendent awe of the majesty of our life-giving sun and our moon, and the stupendous coincidence or design of our Earth/Moon/Sun system boasting the perfect geometry of lunar size and distance such that the moon precisely covers the disk of the sun. What magnificent art is that astonishing corona, if art it is. Either way, it is breathtaking. And humbling.
I now understand why people say once you’ve seen a total eclipse, you want to keep on seeking them out. Even after surviving the two-hundred-mile traffic jam returning home (oh, for a flying car!). The next one on U.S. soil won’t be for twenty years, so maybe I have some international travel to look forward to! Zounds!
Ironically, this event was visible from my hometown of Huron, Ohio. If I’d been in the house I grew up in, I could have stepped out into the backyard. Same for my mom, God rest her soul, who grew up on a farm in Wooster, Ohio. Sometimes the spacetime continuum is in need of a little tweaking.
A week ago, we had a movie night/book launch party at my home, and we watched First Man, the excellent biopic about Neil Armstrong, which of course culminated (SPOILER ALERT!) with the successful first landing on the moon.
