For 2½ minutes, eclipse was all we thought about
MIDDLE OF NOWHERE, Wyo. — “I get it. All those quotes of ‘You haven’t seen it until you’ve seen it,’” Amy Read said. “I get it.”
Read, of Aurora, Colo., had just witnessed the Great American Eclipse just outside Orin, Wyo., on Monday afternoon.
Read, along with hundreds of thousands of other people, had trekked to Wyoming to see the celestial spectacle.
After speaking to several “eclipse chasers” in the weeks leading up to the event, I decided to drive up from Albuquerque to the path of totality to see a total eclipse for myself.
Michael Zieler of Santa Fe had told me that the exhilaration of seeing a total solar eclipse is often followed by a sense of sorrow and the question, “When is the next one?” I know what he means. After working a late shift Saturday night, I woke up around 5 Sunday morning and started the 10-hour drive.
The traffic wasn’t as bad as the media had made it out to be, maybe because the media had made it sound like it was going to be so bad.
I pitched my tent in a horse pasture being rented out for 50 bucks a pop by an entrepreneurial Douglas, Wyo., family, with around 1,000 other people.
“I didn’t know what a big deal this was for some people,” landowner Daviette Calderon said.
They’d expected just half of the number that showed up.
But if there’s one thing Wyoming doesn’t lack, it’s wide open space.
I woke up around 6:30 Monday morning, filled with anticipation as I drank instant coffee in the manure-dotted grass field.
It’s truly difficult to describe what happened next.
We’ve all seen the pictures of a solar eclipse, in which the sun’s outer atmosphere is visible to the naked eye in a spray of light around the moon.
But a photograph can’t — and doesn’t — tell the whole, sensorial story.
After I had watched (with proper eye protection, of course) the moon drift across the sun for nearly an hour and a half, a huge shadow swept across the land from the west going at around 2,000 mph. Nearby, Interstate 25 stilled. A few stars appeared, and all around the horizon, the sky was pink and orange and gold, as it is at sunset.
The temperature dropped, and I shivered. And the noise. When the darkness struck, the shrieks and howls of 1,000 people went up into the air.
People were literally howling like animals. I may have cried a little bit. And then it was over. The sunlight returned and the moon slowly began retreating.
Those were a couple of the fastest minutes of my life.
What was so truly lovely about the whole thing, apart from the sheer sight of it, was that for one of the first times in such a long, long time, we were there.
Nobody was taking selfies, posting on Facebook, staring blankly at their smartphones.
I didn’t hear the words “Donald Trump” for 2½ freaking minutes. (Not taking a political stance here, but you know what I mean.)
I wasn’t worried about saving for retirement or that pile of dirty laundry that needs to be washed and dried at home.
It was invigorating and emboldening to see that thousands of human beings can still gather together and share in an experience without hate or conflict or malice. We are social creatures, after all.
It’s my (perhaps a little naive) hope that everyone who was there with me in that field, and the millions of people watching the eclipse across the country, remember what that felt like.
Zieler was right. I did feel sorrow when the eclipse ended.