Some things I want to remember about the eclipse
Aug 22, 2017 · 2 min read
- As soon as we got off the highway, we were greeted by handmade posterboards proclaiming ECLIPSE PARKING CALL 423-XXX-XXXX
- The air was soupy hot. We parked in front of a huge magnolia tree, perhaps Tennessee’s second biggest, and paid a nice lady $20 for the privilege of temporarily flattening the clover on her lawn.
- People had staked out spots in front of businesses and were selling sandwich baggies with Capri Suns and Doritos in them. They were selling Moon Pies, Ring Pops, homemade candles.
- Church groups were giving out free water. I gave them a dollar for two bottles. It’s funny how a proud New Yorker would rather fund #itstimeforprayer than be indebted to a Baptist church for water.
- The t-shirts were going like hotcakes, which in the South is a very literal expression. Americans are super fond of commemorative t-shirts. Everyone was out of smalls. (Why is everyone always out of smalls?)
- After partial eclipse began, we scooted out of the shade because the sunlight felt curiously cold on our skin.
- The world slowly dimmed, like when you think you are about to faint and your vision starts to go. Maybe I imagined it, but the sounds got muffled too.
- Our dog pooped and we had to pick it up.
- Moments before totality began, the crowd started cheering. Then when totality began everyone got silent.
- During totality, the horizon was peachy-blue all around, like a 360-degree sunset. Why? a trick of the atmosphere?
- Cicadas and night crickets started to shriek. There was a very bright star in the sky that we thought was Venus.
- Streetlights automatically came on.
- I couldn’t stop staring at the hole where the sun was. It was the darkest thing I’d ever seen. Darker than black velvet, darker than a well, darker than Vantablack (maybe, I haven’t seen it). The sky around the corona was a lush violet indigo, tapering into a gossamer sparkling white, which suddenly ended at the edge of this round hole that I had to convince myself was the moon. Yup, a positive mass, not a portal into another dimension.
- But it was’t scary. It was impressive. Oddly I felt like someone had put a sticker of a very realistic solar eclipse up in the sky, so much did it look like pictures I’d seen online. I never expect actual astronomy to resemble the doctored and edited, if breathtaking, images that people post on 500px. The Horsehead Nebula isn’t actually a purple and pink laser show. The Milky Way isn’t a Lisa Frank river through the sky. But a total eclipse of the sun actually does look like that IRL.
- When it was over, somebody saw us packing up and came over to ask where we were from. We said: New York, Rhode Island. They were impressed we had come so far to their small town. You could hear the mixed pride and excitement in her voice. In a rare moment, the world had come to their doorstep, and they were there to show it a good time.
