Yesterday the sky went dark in the middle of the day. The birds went silent, a chill crept into the air, and the moon eclipsed the sun. For four minutes on a Monday afternoon in April, the earth and the moon and the sun perfectly aligned to give millions of North Americans a rare glimpse of a special cosmological event.
Science explains the unique rarity of eclipses - the precise balance of diameter and distance and orbit allows the moon to be able to cover the sun completely, while still leaving a halo of light for those bound on terra firma to observe. Combined with the elliptical orbits of the earth and the moon, and the annual positioning of perihelion and aphelion, of perigee and apogee, it’s a wonder that we get to see anything at all. And in another billion years, it will never happen again - a product of the ever shifting distance of the moon. Entropy in action.
Of course, humanity and history have other explanations. In many legends, the sun is devoured from the sky. The ancient Chinese said a dragon. The Vietnamese said a giant frog while the Andeans said a puma; the Choctaw, a mischievous black squirrel. In the US northwest, the Pomo people said that Ursa Major went out for a stroll along the milky way, and after arguing with the sun about who would move first, the great bear took a bite out of the unwavering sun. Other cultures imagine celestial love stories playing out among the heavens. Opposites attract, the chase and the success of capture, the spinning away and turning towards each other again. A forbidden rendezvous against a backdrop of stars. Still others claimed the eclipse as an abandonment; the Greeks, the Inca, the Transylvanians, interpreting it as the divine wrath of gods displeased with mortals on earth. But one of my favorites comes from the Bella Coola people of Canada, who thought that the sun was merely clumsy and occasionally dropped its torch. A reminder that even cosmic entities can be human.
We watched the Great North American Eclipse of 2024 from the backyard of my aunt and uncle’s house in Indianapolis. Stretching across 13 (itself a somewhat significant astrological number meaning change and death - perhaps the death of the sun for some?) U.S. states and parts of Mexico and Canada, the path of totality passed over an estimated 31 million people, with even more traveling from further reaches to view the singular event. In this moment, we were merely a handful among the masses.
The eclipse is special, for most anything else a percentage of 90% or higher is cause for celebration. But not for this. A viewing of a total solar eclipse is a zero sum game - either you see it in its totality or nothing at all. There is nothing that can compare to the spectacle of a solar eclipse, and standing beneath its vast shadow for the first time, I felt the enormity of our universe and our place among the earth and the moon and the sun and stars.
During the four minutes of blackout totality, while peering through binoculars to view the sparkling pops of light that make up Baily’s Beads, while scrambling to take a blurry photo on an overexposed phone camera of the blazing corona, while counting out the suddenly exposed planetary stars of Venus and Jupiter, while breathing in the stillness of the air as everything hovered on the edge of something unspeakable and incredible, I couldn’t help but also think briefly of a short story we read in grade school.
The sun came out. It was the color of flaming bronze and it was very large. And the sky around it was a blazing blue tile color. And the jungle burned with sunlight as the children, released from their spell, rushed out, yelling into the springtime.
It's ironic that the first literary reference I could think of during a total solar eclipse was a story about waiting for the sun to come out. All Summer in a Day by Ray Bradbury follows a group of children far into the future living on Venus, waiting for the few hours where the rain and the clouds part to let in the sunshine, once every seven years. All but one child grew up on the constantly overcast planet, but that one child remembers the light and the warmth of the sun from when she was young and before her family made the journey to the new world. But in this story, there is isolation, there is bullying, there are tears.
It's a tragedy, but like all great tragedies, it resonated with me in that moment of darkness, where this child was waiting for her moment of light. There is a contrast in our stories, and the stark reminder that we are only pinpricks among the stars. I haven't read this story in years, certainly it has been more years than the time spent waiting on Venus, but it struck me in that moment all the same. We were both of us waiting, we were all waiting.
All of this passed within a span of minutes. Black velvet with a ring of silver, into diamonds, back into gold once more. We came, we saw, we cheered. And once the moon completed its magnificent journey, exiting stage right back out to disappear among the untraceable atmosphere, we went back out into the sunshine world once again.
:) Kathryn
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