Obsessed by Eclipses?

After following the recent eclipse on CNN, I almost feel as if I had watched it in person. But I can't add it to my list--actually being 'there' is such a profound experience TV just doesn't do it.

Photo by Ray Pearson, originally published in Bozeman, Montana-based High Country News. An enthusiastic crowd gathered at Montana State University in 1979 for a rare total solar eclipse.

Solar eclipses have become “a thing” with me. My fascination with them really began in 1979, when a total eclipse would pass across Montana in February, right over highway 93 just a couple of miles from our home. My husband Greg and our two young sons David (13) and Jason (11) had become rather obsessed after reading up on the subject and were determined to experience this rare awesome event.

However, winters in Montana tend to be cloudy, then more cloudy. We were all concerned about the weather and all slept uneasily, concerned that winter might win and we’d miss this greatly anticipated event.

When the time came close and the sky was filled with clouds, we hopped into our car and drove back and forth, south and back northward along the highway, hoping to find a spot where the sky was clear—no luck.

Cosmic Grace

Then as the moment got closer and closer, Greg pulled off the road a mile away from home, where the clouds looked just a bit thinner. We scrambled out of the car and put on our eclipse glasses, gazing upward, as the clouds toyed with us, dancing around the sun, letting it peek out, then obscuring it again. We could feel the cold winter air get even colder as the sun’s strength was progressively blocked.

As around Missoula, the clouds played hide and seek with the eclipse near Bozeman. Photo courtesy of Montanabw, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Magically, the clouds opened just as the moon slipped over the last edge of the sun, and near darkness blanketed us. Nearby cows mooed, and we humans gasped and ‘wowed’ , holding our breath and blasting it out again, overwhelmed by the powerful image of the blackened sun still radiating a ring of light around the rim of the moon’s shadow.

The sky was clearer in Manitoba, Canada, during the 1979 solar eclipse. Photo from bossco, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Then suddenly sunlight returned, delicately brightening the landscape and creating weak shadows here and there. The four of us wowed some more and hugged and suddenly realized we were very cold. We piled back into the car and drove the short way home, still feeling somehow altered but also more bonded to one another as a family after sharing this profound experience.

Fast forward 36 years to 2017. Another eclipse, another opportunity! Greg and I were still living in Montana but Jason and family were in California. Over time Jason had become more and more entranced by the cosmos, and he realized that this next total solar eclipse could become a family event.

Since that eclipse would be in August, our granddaughters would be out of school, and Jason and Colette could take a couple of vacation days. And they loved road trips. We studied the path of the eclipse and the potential weather on the Big Day at various sites. We didn’t want to end up in a parking lot in a city as part of a mob scene. We finally settled on a wildlife refuge in Idaho, not far from the Montana border. The refuge management was getting prepared for guests, so we decided that was the best destination.

Greg and I drove over from Missoula, where we lived then, and Jason’s family drove in from the San Francisco Bay Area, where they lived.My previous newsletter “A Total Experience” describes the event, but I wanted to share a few more photos from Jason’s family collection in hopes of getting across the uniqueness of this experience.

Greg, me, and Jason all wearing our “eclipse glasses” look up at the sun as the moon begins to cover it. The bright sunlight will soon be overtaken by near darkness.

During totality, all was almost black when we looked out over our surroundings. But all the sky surrounding the distance looked orange, like sunrise or sunset—it was like we were standing in the middle of a sunset. If you look closely at the horizon, you can see the distant Grand Teton Mountains.

Where we were it wasn’t like being in a room with no illumination; it was more like being surrounded by dark gray air.

Here’s my husband Greg looking up at the totally eclipsed sun. You can see a bit of the surroundings and the lovely all around golden “sunset” effect along the horizon.

The eclipsed sun is reflected i the car window, and somehow what light there is also reflects off of the car’s lights. Quite eery.

Jason set up a camera to start taking a speeded up image shortly before totality and following through into just after totality. Notice how the nearby land gets dark and the horizon becomes orange.

If you’re wishing you could view a total solar eclipse, you can, if you don’t mind traveling abroad. There’s one in 2026 and one in 2027. Here’s a link to a great site to learn all the details about upcoming eclipses, both lunar and solar and partial as well as total:

https://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/list.html