For a few hours, ‘cosmic magic’ sweeps away America’s troubles
“One of the most incredible things I’ve ever seen. It made me cry, and my children cheered.”
Kev Brock, Salem, Ore.
A summer of shock — threats of nuclear war from North Korea, racial violence in Charlottesville, Va. — was graced by a few hours of awe as Americans marveled Monday at their first coast-to-coast total solar eclipse since Woodrow Wilson was in the White House.
Before the celestial event, Kev Brock thought her husband’s enthusiasm was too much, thought the people she’d read about crying and cheering at past eclipses were “overly dramatic.”
Then the moon crossed the sun in Riverfront Park in Salem, Ore.
“One of the most incredible things I’ve ever seen. It made me cry, and my children cheered,” Brock said.
Even seasoned astronomers were stunned.
“The sun disappearing in midday? The stars coming out? Truly special,” said Steve White, director of Fresno State University’s Downing Planetarium, who watched in Salem.
Wyoming’s clear skies drew hundreds of people to the top of Grand Targhee Resort, 10,000 feet above sea level in Alta.
“I’ve never seen the diamond ring so bright, so extraordinarily brilliant,” said Clare Coss, 81, who came from Manhattan to see her third total solar eclipse.
Fears of clouds and wildfire smoke billowing in from the West were misplaced as watchers enjoyed a brilliantly clear totality.
“There’s something so fabulous about the cosmic magic bringing us all together,” said Blanche Cook, 78, who watched from the resort.
It had been 99 years since America’s last Pacific-to-Atlantic total solar eclipse in
1919 and 38 years since the last such eclipse occurred in the continental USA. That was
1979, before almost half of Americans alive Monday were born.
A nation increasingly separated by politics was unified by a natural event that started in the blue state of Oregon and ended about 90 minutes later in red South Carolina. People came from all over to see day turn into night — darkness at noon as the moon’s shadow moved across the land.
Visibility, which was crystal-clear when the eclipse developed in the Pacific Northwest, was variable thereafter.
Clouds obscured the view on the Plains in Nebraska, and rain drenched would-be eclipse watchers in St. Joseph, Mo., before stopping just long enough to allow a glimpse of the heavens.
Things were trickier in Charleston, S.C., where the partially eclipsed sun played peekaboo with a layer of stratocumulus clouds.
“We want to punch the clouds right in the face,” said Terry Tucker of Vineland, N.J., who came south to see the eclipse with his wife and son.
As the moment of totality approached, a thunderstorm blew up just north of the city, illuminating the growing darkness with wild bolts of lightning.
When the eclipse finally occurred, Tucker and others in historic Marion Square could see it.
The TV star of the day was CNN correspondent Stephanie Elam in St. Joseph. For much of the morning, she was dripping, chillingly wet and obviously wondering what moron on the assignment desk sent her to cover a solar eclipse in the middle of a rainstorm. Then, suddenly, the skies cleared, and a nationwide audience was treated not only to the sight of the eclipse and the sound of the cheers of the crowd viewing it but the exhalation of a journalist who did, after all, have a story.
People came from all over the world for a look. Mike Dunz, a German, drove 800 miles from Florida to reach the path of totality in Gallatin, Tenn. “I’m an eclipse hunter,” he said. “I saw one in Germany in 1999, and there was nothing, no way in this world, to describe when the moon blocks out the sun.”
Sai Vemu and Karthik Venmuri, two college students from India, were there, too. “Never in our lives have we witnessed anything like this, and never again in India will we get to see it,” Vemu said. “When we learned of this, we knew we must come.”
Excitement extended outside the primary, 70-mile-wide viewing band. A partial eclipse was visible in sections of all 50 states, not just the 14 through which the path of totality passed.
On Garret Mountain, overlooking the immigrant mecca of Paterson, N.J., people gathered on a broad lawn, explaining to one another in several languages how to use eclipse glasses.
Some had homemade viewing devices fashioned from cardboard and a plastic filter.
Others had glasses. As they first glimpsed the shadow blocking much of the sun, many gasped — something everyone everywhere does in the same language.
Volcanoes Stadium in Keizer, Ore., hosted the first “Eclipse Game” in baseball history. The Salem-Keizer Volcanoes played the Hillsboro Hops in a game interrupted by the first “eclipse delay” in baseball history.
Fans from 34 states and eight countries were there. One, Joan Bouchard, came to share the moment with her granddaughter. “Very moving,” she said. “I will
never be around to see another one, so this was very important.”
It may not be the last one for her granddaughter, Chase. “I was surprised that people were coming from all over the world to see this,” the girl said. “But now that I’ve seen it, I would definitely go again.”
A group of students from Athens, Ohio, watched the show while camped in front of Nashville’s Parthenon. They look forward to the next one in North America, in 2024.
As one of them, Benjamin Weiser, observed, “It’s a good time to be alive.”