Journey to Montana for the Solar Eclipse

Monet Thomson
Jul 30, 2017 · 4 min read

Monday, Feb 26, 1979: Lewistown, Montana

Eclipse path 1979

The four of us left Chapel Hill, North Carolina on February 22. Our crew was Bill in his blue truck; Mike and his dog, Pele, in Mike’s white van; and my husband Rick and I, who were along to share the driving. Destination: Lewistown, Montana, where we hoped to experience totality.

Oh … just a fun, non-stop outing across the country in the dead of winter. We had friends care-taking a lodge in Glacier National Park, so we would push on there after the eclipse.

Young and intrepid, we set forth.

Lexington, KY in the morning — Chicago in the afternoon — Wisconsin fish house Friday night.

The cold seared the insides of my nostrils. I had never walked on snow that crunched before, like it did in this absolute cold. We couldn’t keep warm driving down the road, covered in blankets, with the heaters blasting away.

The Dakotas in a daze — switching drivers, switching riders, making interminable stops for gas and coffee, talking on the CB to each other, Pelican and Blue Goose. A glorious, Arctic sunset over the snow fields of — was it North Dakota? — and a descent into night.

I had driven valiantly from about 5 am to 7 am across the vast, white silence of Montana. Snow drifts reduced the road to a yellow racing stripe. The tires bumped over the soft snow piled past these drifts. Silent owls and darting rabbits broke the monotonous landscape, though they too were white. There was no moon but it was oddly luminous as we drove along, our headlights reflecting off the snow.

That pioneer truck stop we passed through: the wiry man with close-cropped hair and denim and cowboy boots, rubbing his hands as he hurried out to service us.

We reached Lewistown about 8 am on Sunday morning. We got there just in time to get a room, and we took turns showering and sleeping. I nearly cried with tiredness and happiness when we pulled into the White Rose Café that morning. That night, we bought beer and tacos and walked up high behind the motel to a windy hill by the old hospital where we looked at stars and the lights of Lewistown.

Monday, Feb 26, 1979 — ECLIPSE DAY

Eclipse day dawned clear. The town was hopping. People were assembling all sorts of fancy camera equipment. We breakfasted at the White Rose where a pretty woman with curly hair cried all through breakfast. Her two children chattered as though nothing was wrong. The husband patted her sympathetically on occasion. It was weird to be sitting there trying to eat eggs and look across to see this woman break down every time she lifted her fork. There were eclipse t-shirts for sale and one over-worked waitress.

We drove down to the airport, past where people were clustered. We were excited and we were cold. Private planes flew in one after another.

When we held the welding glass up to the sun we could see the beginnings of the eclipse: a green crescent creeping over the edge of the sun from right to left.

“It’s beginning. It’s beginning!”

A carload of locals had set up where we were. We were all very friendly and jabbered excitedly. A slender woman with blonde hair and an air of wittiness had balled up a handkerchief and put it over one eye behind her glasses to make the eclipse seem brighter when she removed the patch.

Darkness rolled in from the northwest. The white mountains were silhouetted in blue shadow. Horses galloped across the snowy fields. Then came the flash of the corona, the glow of light surrounding the eclipsed sun.

“Do you see it? Do you see it?”

I jumped up and down and squealed like a kid. Everyone talked at once and then a hush. The sun was now one big pasted-out circle with a rim of brightness around it.

With the binoculars, you could see spots of red and green glinting on the bottom left of the crazy cardboard circle.

We stomped our feet to get warm. Totality lasted only 2 ½ minutes. Out popped a crescent from under the shadow of the moon, glinting eye-shattering brightness. It was over.

Clouds of darkness receded from the mountains, a pink glow warmed us. The few stars that had been visible were gone. No instant replay of this one.

Our companions milled around outside their cars, smoking, laughing; it was a carnival atmosphere. They invited us over for coffee — a big loud family. We ate and drank and then set out again.

Now on to Glacier Park to visit Jim and Chris at St. Mary Lodge.

We made it safely back to Chapel Hill on Friday, March 9. There would not be another total solar eclipse across the contiguous United States until August 21, 2017.

There had been a total solar eclipse on March 7, 1970 that I dimly recall viewing at the Planetarium in Chapel Hill, where I had just started graduate school. I remember watching it through cardboard eclipse glasses with another woman sitting beside me out on the front lawn of the Planetarium. But it wasn’t totality. If I had driven just a few miles east, I could have seen totality in Greenville, NC, which was in the dead center of the path. I didn’t have a car, though. That could have been the start of my fabulous eclipse watching career.

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