A Total Experience
If at all possible, view the April 8 solar eclipse! The eclipse in 2017 provided dramatic and humbling experiences for me and my family. Here's a story cowritten with my daughter-in-law Colette Plum.
After our awesome experience, Colette and I decided it would be fun to write about the experience together, to share our two viewpoints with others. Here’s the result. My words are in regular type; Colette’s are in italics.
A Total Experience
By Dorothy Hinshaw Patent and Colette Plum
Hubby Greg and I and our son Jason, his wife Colette, and their two daughters Mariette and Francesca decided to rendezvous for the August 21, 2017 total solar eclipse. They came in from California, and we drove over from our home in Missoula, MT. Here’s our story.
We spend the previous night at a motel in Dillon, MT, and drive in separate cars in total blackness, arriving at Camas National Wildlife Refuge in Idaho by 5:50 am. We drive slowly along the dirt road leading to the entrance.
The sky is beginning to brighten, from black, to indigo, to a paler blue and a thin swath of orange slowly rising from the east.
Soon we’re guided by refuge staff to park across the narrow dirt road from a cattail-bordered pond. On either side of the road, wheat-gold grassy fields spread out far into the distance, providing a perfect canvas for the rising sun.
We scan the skies, eyeing traces of clouds along the horizon, but most of the sky is clear blue above. As I step out of the car into the brightening dawn, I’m first struck by the wondrous fresh smells—sweet grass, the subtle prickle of sage.
The human presence is spread out along the refuge roads—rather than a crowd of people populating a city park, say, our group is a linear “crowd,” with parked cars along the snaking tourist road through the refuge.
Jason and I stroll along the road checking it out, greeting our fellow travelers who by happenstance or circumstance have found their way here today. Everyone seems to have their own way of settling in. Some relax on comfy chaises, others have camp chairs with portable tables to hold their coffee mugs. There’s a group with a buffet table between their cars laden with tasty looking dishes.
The girls cozy themselves deep inside their sleeping bags; it’s chilly at about 47 degrees F. The time is now 7:15 am, about 3 hours before the “main event” begins. I check out my eclipse glasses, surprised to see just how small the golden globe of sun is in the sky. Its presence in our lives is as a blindingly bright region in the sky that our eyes instinctively avoid. We don’t realize that it actually takes up no more of the sky than does the full moon—otherwise, the moon wouldn’t be able to obscure the whole face of the sun.
Inches away from my perch I see the a shimmering line of a dewy spider’s web stretched between reeds of grass—one flash of silvery-white wavering against a sea of gold and green, a reminder that Nature is our host and we are guests camping out in her capacious and grand rooms. I hear the rush of wind nearby and lift my head to see a small grove of poplars, lush and verdant from the powerful sun’s energy. Modest-looking sun, tiny spider, towering trees, all interconnected facets of the natural world we all depend on.
Mariette, fifteen, sits upright in her sleeping bag, writing in her journal. Thirteen-year-old Francesca lies on her belly, phone in hand, editing photos and videos she has been shooting all morning.
The beginning of the eclipse, which will start here at exactly 10:15:11AM, approaches. With the tense excitement and the dry grasses around us I’m reminded of Linus, waiting for the Great Pumpkin, hopeful and determined. The Great Pumpkin never came, but here we are, ready to watch the eclipse unfold with the great precision science provides.
When I put on my eclipse glasses, the world goes black, until I tilt my head and find the fiery orange ball of the sun in the sky, singular and whole. An osprey settles on a nearby tree. I wait, pulse rising, for the moment of first contact.
With the first bite of the moon into the sun’s disk at the upper right corner, everyone along the road turns quiet.
It doesn’t take long before the air begins to cool. As about a third of the sun is covered, the feeling of heat on my skin is gone even though the light doesn’t look different yet. Here in a mountain valley at 4,800 feet, the thin, dry air quickly cools as less of the sun’s heat reaches us.
We talk among ourselves as the sun crescent becomes smaller and smaller, the six of us, comparing our senses. “Does it feel cooler to you,” I ask. “Yes” and “Not yet” are answers. Soon all of us agree, “Yes, it’s cooler; I need my sweater.” How about the light—the sun is now about half occluded—but we don’t see any difference yet. The swallows, however, are flocking up above, swooping and diving for flying insects as they do at dawn and dusk; they are clearly sensing the reduced sunlight.
About ten minutes before totality, the sky above the western horizon becomes dark gray as the fullness of the eclipse approaches us. The light becomes indescribably strange—sharp but lightened shadows, subtle bluish tint to the light, bright and pale at the same time. It makes us nervous—what’s happening? It just doesn’t feel “normal.”
The time frame seems to quicken as coolness becomes cold and the light dims faster and faster like a soft gray blanket descending upon us. BOOM, the sun is completely occluded at 11:32:30 AM, precisely on schedule.
For me, the sensation is like a hand has suddenly turned down the dimmer switch on a light, and with one smooth downward flick of a wrist we are left with only a remaining glow on the cusp of what would otherwise be sudden darkness. Everyone spontaneously erupts in cheers. Mariette softly exclaims, ”It’s so preettty…” Jason calls out “Look, you can see the Tetons! Clear as a bell.”
Brilliant wisps of the ethereal white corona dance around the moon’s outline. Venus shows up nearby. It’s happening, right before our eyes. Amazing. I look all around the horizon and admire the 360-degree “sunset/sunrise” orange glow encircling the horizon. Suddenly a brilliant blast of sunlight—the diamond effect—appears, and totality has ended.
Light comes back quickly, the dimmer switch slides back up to “on.” We stand together breathless—pilgrims, witnesses, fellow travelers on our path around the sun. There is no disappointment. Our Great Pumpkin arrived, grander than anything we could have imagined.
Total Eclipses in the 21st Century
What a well written story! I think that this is an example that high school and college teachers could use as an example of good writing. I think that it should be submitted to an anthology, such as Glimmer Train.
Wonderful memories, Dorothy! We spent the eclipse just south of McCall Idaho on a mountain ridge, having camped there the night before. I swear we could see the shadow darkening the earth on one side of the ridge before it reached us.