Back in December my social media feed brought me a news story about how accessible (theoretically) the April 8, 2024 total eclipse would be across the eastern half of the US and I began mapping distances to cities in the path of totality. After being priced out of hotel rooms, I looked at smaller cities and towns in the path and decided it was doable both financially and logistically, and a quest was born.
I had fully intended to cancel our hotel room if the eclipse day forecast was forecast to be cloudy or rainy, but after reading people’s accounts of clouded over total eclipses, we decided we’d go rain or shine. And when we woke up on April 8, it was raining. The rain quickly cleared off by noon, and then high clouds moved in during the early afternoon.
I had been undecided about where to watch the eclipse. We were in the zone of totality so what we needed was a clear view of the sky. My first choice had too many trees to clearly see the sky, and we decided to watch from the patio of our hotel, only having to share the space with 2 of our fellow guests.
I don’t have any spectacular photos to share because I am not a photographer, and I wanted to spend my time in the moment. One of the things I did want to document though was not just the fading light as the eclipse began, but also how the color began draining out of things, and how almost 2 dimensional everything looked, but my phone’s camera was not up to the task.
I did see similar comments on social media as people tracked the partial eclipse so I wasn’t the only one who saw how odd the light became—first similar to the last partial eclipse I had seen in 2017, and even more markedly weird as the moon almost covered the sun. I did see one strange shadow where a robin’s shadow reflected enormously against the side of the building. It was otherworldly and unsettling.
The afternoon vacillated between being warm and cool as the clouds came and went, but once the eclipse got going it got steadily cooler. And the breeze that had kicked up making us weigh down our eclipse glasses calmed down. The birds began singing a chorus so loudly that it successfully competed with all of the traffic noise around us.
And then the weird flat light began to drain away, and not slowly like it does during a summer sunset. It perceptibly drained away and I thought it was kind of scary to see all of that light just disappear. It was deliberate.
And then poof! It was dark. And beautiful. And moving. And there was this beautiful light of dawn at one edge, and then at the edge of everything, as if the darkness were merely floating on top, and non weighing down on us. And it was quiet.
And then there was the sun and you could just…look at it. And I saw the sun with a deep black center, and white fire around it, which I expected. But there was also a brilliant red prominence at the bottom and it was a beautiful contrast to the black and white. And around the sun, where the clouds had cleared and it was dark, you could see Jupiter.
And it was overwhelming and the dread I had felt as the light and color drained away was replaced with sheer awe. The awe of the science and mathematics that makes it all line up in the first place. The awe of standing 93 million miles away from a star and being able to clearly see some parts of it, and then to see the prominence that no one had expected.
And then it was over when just the moon unblocked just the thinnest slice of the sun, and the light came flooding back. It was still as dim as it was just before totality, but after totality it felt like high noon.
I asked my husband what struck him about the eclipse and he said he didn’t expect to have the 360 degree full circle of dawn/dusk all around, and I understand that because that’s one of the reasons that you know that it’s not just the start or end of a day.
I know that pictures can’t tell the real story of what it was like, and as it turns out, words really can’t either. The best thing is to experience one if you can. It’s one thing that lives up to the hype.
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