Total eclipse, oh my heart

When Rob told me about ten years ago that he wanted to see North America’s total solar eclipse in August 2017, I gamely said, “Sure! That sounds like fun.”

About five years ago, Rob told me he had decided we would go to the middle of Oregon, probably a town called Madras, to be in the path of totality. I had no idea where that was but I was totally up for finding out.

Two years ago, Rob got a little concerned. He wasn’t the only astronomical fan with his eye on Madras for the big Black Out. Hotels and motels were already selling out. Our eclipsing travel plan shifted to Idaho, near where my parents live, hoping that Portland’s airport would be more of a national draw than Boise’s.

Two days ago, with Highway Patrol predicting 10 hours to drive 90 miles, Rob and I packed provisions for car camping and headed out on our Eclipsing Adventure 2017.

Lawn chairs, two gallons of water, two coolers of food, a 5-gallon jug of gasoline, blankets, a little table, poles and clamps to set up a make-shift awning, Piglet. Everything we could think of that might come in handy if one were camped out in a ditch in the middle of Idaho or Oregon farmland.

Keeping a watchful eye on Google Maps traffic, we saw green lines turn to orange and red in three of our researched locations in totality’s center path. Plan F was determined last night. Brogan, Oregon or bust!

Note the local keeping watch on his tractor

We left my parents' house this morning at 5:00am Pacific time. We traveled country roads and were high-fiving the lack of traffic in the morning darkness save for farm trucks and rural school buses.

Online, Brogan promised a small market (nope) and more cows than people (yep). We hoped to pull into the market’s parking lot, mosey in to buy some snacks, and plead permission to camp out in their parking lot for the morning.

At about 6:40am, we rolled past the town sign and found a “city” park. Three cars were parked on the adjacent dirt road and two lawn chairs were occupied by a nice couple from Santa Cruz, California reading and enjoying some coffee. A man was sitting on the park’s lone bench. A woman was napping on a blanket nearby.

We could not have found a more perfect spot. We sat on cool, green grass with enough space around us not to feel crowded but with sufficient people to chat with and share anticipation.

And a porta-potty!! The park had a porta-potty! I was so excited to see that little wooden shack smelling of fresh disinfectant! And so grateful that I could give my parents back their “in case of emergency” bucket unused. Bring on the Gatorade!

I visited three times just cuz I could.
Brogan I love you!

In the middle of the park, Pat the Park Lady set up her eclipse-themed quilt. She was a local and was selling raffle tickets to win the quilt. The proceeds were to help support some of the families in town as well as the town’s efforts to revitalize their community center aka wooden grange thing that looked in need of some love.

Pat's the one in the middle.  She was hoping to raise $500.
By the time we left, I ended up hugging Pat good-bye.
What a sweet lady and what a sweet town!

Pat went around and greeted people, told people about her quilt, provided some tables of books and other yard-salesy items to browse, and otherwise was a hoot of an ambassador for her small town.

One nugget: “We don’t have a city hall or a grocery store. We don’t even have a town drunk, so we take turns.”

When asked by a Salt Lake visitor about cell service, Pat advised the frustrated out-of-towner to “…go down that road there to the left. There’s one spot where you can sometimes get cell service. Everyone here who has a cell phone goes to that spot. So good luck.”

The Salt Lake lady decided to join the rest of us in taking a blessed break from connectivity. She never went in search of The Magic Cell Spot.

Rob used the compass on his phone to figure out his best guess where the sun would be when totality hit. The few trees around us providing much appreciated shade were possible obstructions so I once again patted myself on the back for marrying such a handy engineer type.

We had about three hours to kill. We sat in our chairs, Rob read a little, I took a lot of pictures, we eavesdropped on Pat.

We showed the surprisingly impressed middle-school son of the Santa Cruz couple how our nail-hole-in-a-paper-plate eclipse-watcher worked. We brought it along in homage to the 1979 eclipse I remember experiencing in California as a 5th grader at about 80% totality. Back then there was no hype, no fancy glasses, no warnings of Trafficmaggedon. Just pin holes in paper on the playground with Mr. Watson.

Thanks for the supplies, Mom!

We talked to a dad and his two kids from Phoenix. They flew in just for the eclipse and were skipping school with pride and defiance.

One local couple showed up with their welding helmets.

Another local dad with an open-carry pistol on his hip wandered in about an hour before things got underway. He also had a welding helmet but no glasses for his two kids. A woman behind us from California sang out, “I’ve got some extra glasses for the kids if you want!”

After he graciously accepted the glasses, the local asked with bewilderment surveying his always empty park, “So how does anyone end up in Brogan?!?”

It was a very fair question. For not only were there about 50 people in the small park with us, there were another 50 or so up the hill a bit on a grassy patch outside their Local Volunteer Station. There were some serious telescopes and cameras up there, along with some millennial hippies with an electric guitar (which I thankfully never heard being played).

An older couple showed up with an well-used telescope, cardboard, and rail road ties as weights for a much more impressive pin-hole projector than our paper plate and foam core one. The husband in suspenders was busy setting things up as his wife turned her back to the sun and made circles with her fingers trying to enact a large pinhole.

That's often my stance, too, when my hubby is engineering.

Watching them for a bit I finally guessed, “Are you by any chance retired science teachers?”

The wife smiled broadly and pointed at her futzing husband, “It’s all him!”

“Are you folks locals?” I asked, since they had that small town farmy look to them.

“No, Wisconsin.”

I had to ask the same question as the pistol dad. Turns out the science teaching Wisconsin couple was very intentionally in the little park with us. The husband researched weather and probabilities of cloud cover. “As you go more east the chances of clouds increase.”

He also studied small roads and state routes in an effort to avoid crowded highways and interstates. “We didn’t want to be stuck in a big crowd of people or deal with a lot of traffic.”

Amen brother! And high-five to Rob’s Plan F! Is he brilliant or what? Rob I mean. Well, the science teacher too, I guess.

And then It Was Time.

At first the eclipsing moon was just a tiny blip of a sliver through our eclipse glasses kindly provided by Mt. Hood Territory and our Fair friend John. Thanks again, John!

Then we started to detect just the slightest bit of cooling from the 80-degree heat. A breeze picked up. The light started to dim just a tiny bit such that it felt more like 4:00pm than 10:00am. The light was more yellow, reminding me of my favorite time of day when the sun is low and everything is tinted gold.

I checked my glasses frequently, watching the little sphere of darkness crawl against the bright orange-yellow glow.

“It’s God’s fingernail!” Pat called out with delight and awe.

I expected the eclipse to go from left to right only because that’s how I read. It was the first surprise of many to find the darkness inching from right to left.

When the sun was about half covered, the air was undeniably cooler. I would have guessed it was 10 degrees cooler; subsequent research suggests it was closer to 3 degrees.

And then the light shifted to a tone and a color I have never seen before. It was yellowish but not gold. It was dim but not like dusk. It had a crispness and clarity and vividness I had never experienced. It didn’t feel or look real. It was almost like I was in a weird virtual reality game or a movie with a filter. It truly felt otherworldly.

Rob and I stood with our glasses on, staring at the orangey-yellow glow as the moon slipped fully into place. I had my hand on Rob’s shoulder to steady myself as I forced myself not to blink as totality became reality.

Knowing it was now safe to take off my glasses, I expected to see a yellow glow of the sun’s corona shimmering around the circumference of the moon. I thought it would be sort of pointy and uniform like how I drew the sun as a kid.

Instead, when I took off my glasses, I gasped. My mouth actually fell open. It was without a doubt the most astoundingly, profoundly beautiful thing I have ever seen in my life.

The glow was not yellow; it was bright white. And it was not pointy and uniform; it was a dance of bright white gas shimmering like a bridal veil in a breeze. It was ethereal and delicate yet full of force and power. The sky around it was a deep dark blue unlike any I’ve seen in the sky before. The contrast was intense and shockingly beautiful. The sight was mesmerizing. I started to cry. It was overwhelming and so unexpected and forever redefined my understanding of “awesome” and “awe-inspiring.”

Trying to remember to be present, I forced my eyes away from the beautiful bright white light and looked around the horizon. It was sort of like sunset but not at all. There was some orange and red just above the horizon to the north, but the most prominent color was deeper dark blue.

Totality.  I hesitated to include this picture because it was
actually darker than the picture and the picture really
doesn't do the sight or experience justice.  But it is what
my trusty point-n-shoot gave me.

Doves that had been enjoying the morning in some large trees nearby were suddenly noisier. The breeze was gone and the air was still. I could still clearly see the people around me; it wasn’t dark like night. But what light was still left was crisper. I could see lines and shapes very acutely; there were not the normal soft edges that typically come with night light – a distinction that I didn’t know existed until today.

People were murmuring with excitement and awe around me. Nobody cheered, nobody clapped. Just a lot “WOW! s” and blinking eyes trying to comprehend what we were witnessing.

We were in totality for about two minutes. I could have stayed in that light, in that air, in that space, in that moment forever. It was peaceful and it was exciting. It was quiet and it was noisy. It was profound and it was simple. It was scientific and it was divine. It was spectacular.

And then the Diamond Ring happened.

Rob had mentioned it but I didn’t really understand what it was. I have now seen it.

It is that moment, that split second when the moon moves out of totality. There is a flash of bright white light on the edge of the sun when its light is suddenly, intensely visible again.

It was the brightest, whitest, most intense light I have ever seen. It indeed looked like the most sparkling sideways diamond ring unimaginable. I saw it for maybe one second before rushing my glasses back on to protect my eyes. But that flash, that bright white-blue explosion of light was a lifelong memory made. It and the dancing corona were worth the 10 years of planning and replanning, and the 11 hours of driving. So very very worth it.

Shared with permission from the photographer who took
this amazing photo in Antelope, OR during totality.
Thank you for being such a fantastic photographer,
Tyler Mode!!

The sunlight returned quickly. Within just a few minutes, people were packing up and heading to their cars. More than a few couples were embracing, grateful to have shared such an incredible moment with their most cherished person (at least that’s what I was feeling).

Thanks to Google Maps and a husband who is a traffic ninja, we managed to avoid any and all traffic on the 90-minute drive back to my parents’ house.

Rob could not have planned this day better. The location, the timing, the routes, the provisions. Everything was beyond what I expected and beyond what I breezily agreed to participating in ten years ago. It lived up to and outshone all of the hype.

Absolutely one of my most favorite days in my life.

I love my Eclipse Buddy!