Trembling beneath skies, world united by eclipse
For four minutes, it was a moment of holding something tightly that we can never touch
GUN BARREL CITY — The sun and the moon don’t care for human beings. Whether we end our brief time in this universe through nuclear annihilation or somehow build a peaceful paradise, the celestial bodies will continue their journeys, their revolutions through a vast space, as they have for billions of years.
Yet, in at least one patch of North Texas, on Monday afternoon, it seemed otherwise. The total eclipse of the sun by the moon swept the multitudes of sky-gazing people into an emotional drama, as if we were part of something greater than a mere accident, something more than the result of particles colliding in a coincidental opus of life and consciousness.
The day did not so much break as it woozily rolled in with the fog over Gun Barrel City, a town of some 6,000 souls an hour drive southeast of Dallas. The guests at the Americas Best Value Inn shuffled into the lobby for the free continental breakfast. That includes me, the Chronicle’s deputy opinion editor. I had plans to witness this history at a Central Texas ranch but headed north at the last minute to avoid heavy cloud cover. Over breakfast, everyone’s eyes were cast down at weather apps, all confirming what was plainly visible to the naked eye. Clouds upon clouds, high cirrus on top of low cumulus. Visitors spoke quietly to their companions in Japanese, Punjabi, German, Slovenian, Swedish and Englishes inflected with all manner of southern, western and Yankee drawls.
Kris Szepanski, 65, a retired science teacher, drove in with her husband Steve, 67, from South Carolina, where they saw a total eclipse in 2017. Steve wore an eclipse T-shirt that read “Twice in a Lifetime.”
Katsuhiko Hirose, 68, a retired executive from the Japanese automotive industry, has chased total eclipses in Oregon, Thailand, and China on two occasions. He tried to reassure everyone nearby: they had not wasted their trips. They would see something riveting. The utter darkness under thick clouds feels like “the end of the world,” he said, as if that were a good thing. The point of life, he reminded us, is the unexpected.
The random locations eclipse chasing took him had taught him to appreciate that every place has value, Katsuhiko said, looking towards to the dwindling supply of Cheerios, bran flakes and bagels wrapped in cellophane, and outside to the edge of the Cedar Creek Reservoir edged with wildflowers blooming firewheels of orange, red and yellow.
Then, the sun broke through and the travelers got busy setting up their cameras.
Down the street at the city park, Mayor Brian Crull, 65, had put together a free festival with yoga, fire trucks, vendors selling little crochet animals. He sat on a lawn chair among roughly a hundred people, mostly locals, as an event team handed out free eclipseviewing glasses emblazoned with the city’s logo featuring two antique pistols crossed at the barrels.
The eclipse festival is “just a time for everyone to relax and do something together instead of worrying about everyone’s differences,” Crull said, stressing that the city has an everybody-knows-everybody feel.
Cecilia Phillips, 60, who relocated from Dallas about a year ago, concurred: There’s “nothing polarizing about an eclipse.”
As the earth rotated, the first to experience this in the U.S. were in Eagle Pass, where onlookers near the border with Mexico had a clear view, then Central Texas where thick clouds lingered. It would eventually progress through the Midwest, New York and New England, pulling people of every background away from their phones and jobs, away from schoolwork and account books.
As the eclipse began at 12:23 in Gun Barrel City, the crowd in the park trained their eyes upward, but the clouds returned, a dreaded double layer. I jumped in my car and circled the town, to the reservoir and hotel parking lot, desperate to find an unobstructed view, but to no avail. I settled back into the city park as the light weakened and the moon gradually slipped in front of the sun.
Suddenly, the temperature dropped, the air became crisp, the clouds vanished and the corona throbbed around the dark moon. The crowd exclaimed together, cheered, gasps of “My God.” For four minutes, it was a time of trembling hands, of holding others’ hands, of raising hands to the heavens in a gesture of galactic connection. It was a moment of holding something tightly that we can never touch.
The crock music blaring from the festival went silent. The birdsong dropped behind the chirp of insects. The brilliance of our neighboring planets kept vigil in the dark sky. When the perfect alignment ended, and the initial bead of light first appeared, a shining diamond, the crowd exclaimed anew, even louder. And why shouldn’t they? The light that had left us returned.
Back at the inn, in the parking lot where the photographers packed up their specialty lenses and laptops, Naohiro Tsuji told me that before arriving in Texas, he visited the West Coast and found his great-grandmother’s grave in Los Angeles. His ancestors, he said, had immigrated to the United States long ago. His greatgrandfather had been a Christian pastor before returning to Japan just ahead of World War II.
Thinking of his family’s history, of his second cousins who grew up in the United States, and, though he left it unsaid, of World War II and the bloodshed between our countries, Naohiro said the eclipse “reminds me of the mysterious.” This astronomical event, well studied by scientists, plays out in our lives in a way that binds and harmonizes our lives. For Naohiro, that meant reconnecting with family across continents and history.
Another total eclipse will not return to Texas for decades. For those who experienced it, we hope what French sociologist Emile Durkheim calls “collective effervescence” can be shared and that it connects us across divides. The arc of the eclipse knows no political boundaries.