Light, darkness, then light again

“Get your glasses and look at this,” she said. “It’s like a mouse has bitten off a piece of cheese.”

I had thought that such interesting moments wouldn’t occur for an hour yet. There was a barbecue spread to graze in the meantime, with collard greens and Brussels sprouts.

But that was a tempting simile. I needed to see this missing piece of our sun.

I fumbled around trying to get the special glasses to fold properly over my ears. The Central Arkansas Library System had kindly provided them; maybe reading instructions on them would have been a good idea.

I first put them on backward. Then I got them righted and situated, somewhat, though I felt obliged to hold them in place lest they slide as I peered up. I saw nothing. So I turned my neck and pushed it back further. Then, suddenly, there was a calmly beautiful yellow circle with a little side piece taken out, as if, indeed, a mouse had feasted and darted.

I lowered my head, removed my glasses, turned to the woman who had alerted me, and said, “This is way cooler than I thought it would be.” She said, “Isn’t it?”

We were out in the Pinnacle area, in the large spread of a backyard of a rustic home belonging to nice people who’d invited 20 or so of us. We sat or stood on a platform maybe 15 feet by 12 feet, with our backs to the Little Maumelle River.

Maybe the platform was bigger or smaller than that. I am about as adept with dimension estimates as eclipse glasses.

The noon-hour drive from midtown in Hillcrest was smoother, less attended by traffic, than a regular Sunday morning jaunt to a Waffle House. It appeared that Little Rockians took the governor’s abundance-of-caution warnings of tourist bombardment as a reason to quarantine in place.

I was put in mind of an adapted Yogi Berra-ism: Nobody drives anymore because there’s too much traffic.

It also appeared that we tend to get over-excited about things people elsewhere consider more calmly. Basketball coaches. Indoctrination. People coming.

I knew of several out-of-staters in town for our close glimpse of the solar event. In all cases, they were visiting kinfolk and situated safely out of anyone’s way.

So we dove into the barbecue, stepping out between bites to check on how far the blackness had crossed our sun. Then excitement grew. The group began to take places on the platform. As I walked to it, a fellow called out, “Get up here, Brummett. All the Democrats in Arkansas are up here.”

And I said, “Half of you are from Denver.” Or maybe I said, “half of y’all.”

Indeed, a friend’s beloved older brother and his two adult sons were with us. I asked them my technical questions. I assumed they, being from Denver, were better versed in higher things. They answered credibly, in part because they sometimes said they didn’t know.

Somebody else quipped that the ones with their mouths open as they peered upward were the Arkansans. A little self-effacement never harms anyone, especially considering that, as I looked around, there was truth in it.

It was all right just this once to go all Gomer Pyle.

As wonderful as anything else was the suddenly cooled air and the serene, eerily quiet dusk-like moment descending just before totality.

“Look behind you,” someone said softly. I turned and beheld the dim light over the Little Maumelle and a beauty different by hue, sound and mood from any I’d experienced.

I live with a woman who is pretty good at being in the moment. I spend my hours fast-forwarding—to column deadlines, elections, the death of democracy, billing cycles, what’sfor-dinner contemplations. But I was with her there, I think, in that unprecedented quiet and light.

We were told that the geese fly down to light on that water at dusk. Might they arrive now? No. Didn’t happen. Most likely they were mesmerized in the moment wherever they were.

And then it happened. It went dark. A red flash shot out from the sun. Someone in our group said, “It’s moving. Why is it moving?” No one answered.

In about 150 seconds, right on cue, our world was relighted, and it was over.

We had dessert. People began to leave. One fellow came back promptly and said the RVs that had been gathered for viewing down by the river were causing a bit of a delay in getting to Arkansas 10 and through the stoplight.

So we had our traffic jam. The experience was complete.

I headed home wishing we could have another eclipse tomorrow. But, of course, we can’t.

We can’t make the special commonplace. Anyway, we needed to get back to the common. We lost a whole day of commerce in the moment.