I am one who experiences life more as poetry than as science (sometimes to the consternation of those with whom I do life). This description of my experience of the total eclipse may not reflect scientific accuracy, but it is how I lived it. Also, I have resurrected here an old, dead blog to have some place to set this. If you choose to read any of the other content here, you will first have to blow off the dust.
The
ridge was 5,000 feet high, stuck up in the middle of the sky. A sky that would host a show for us unlike
anything we had ever seen or experienced.
We wandered and wondered, there along the spine of that ridge. We were
expectant, eager, guessing at what we were about to experience. The sky was clear and brilliant blue, except
in the colorless area around the blazing territory of the sun. All appeared as
usual, a normal clear, sunny day in eastern Oregon. We were standing on the promises of science,
waiting for something which did not yet even hint at occurring.
At
first, we noticed that the shadows began to change, lengthening, sharpening
focus. We lifted our hands, spread our
fingers, and watched the umbra of the sun rise between them. Our first fascination of the morning. Then
the sky began to dim, all of it, not slowly, partially, as when a cloud passes
over the sun, but all together, as if a giant umbrella had opened. There was no sign of the moon. The perpetrator in this magnificent event is
invisible until it stands boldly, in its entirety, before the sun.
Shadows
stretched, then rocked and twitched.
Depth perception shifted. Trees
stood out in stark relief against a shimmering twilight – like some film
backdrop, intending to be three-dimensional, but somehow falling just short of
the mark. The world was all silver and
sage and dusty mauve. Colors seemed to
have been drained of all warmth and they appeared as if beneath a thin veneer
of frost. Birds that had been calling,
raucous, in the forest, went silent, preparing for the shortest night of their
lives.
The
breeze gathered itself together, then unfurled as gusts of wind. We zipped our jackets to our necks and drew
our arms about us, reflecting in our actions the deep-seated anxiety that
accompanies an obliteration of the heavenly orb that sustains life. We were driven by instinct as much as
curiosity as we searched the sky. Then
suddenly, the glasses that granted us safety to observe this strange celestial
phenomenon became completely black. Absolute darkness fell, thick and heavy, like the plush of velvet, cool and hinting of
dampness. The encroaching twilight had
tiptoed in. But this total darkness rushed in
and swallowed us. And the thing that we
were waiting for, this event prognosticated by astronomers, was no longer about
science at all. It became all art. The place no longer resembled the planet on
which my feet were firmly planted, the home where I live and breathe. It was a magical place, foreign, yet
familiar. Out of this world in the
truest sense. Past and present. Future
and fantasy.
Someone
yelled. There were cheers and gasps and
mute fascination as we realized that now, for the next hallowed moments, we
could gaze upon the sun without any protection over our eyes. Our voices became muted. We were not without speech– there was too
much to see, too deep a desire to share this immense mystery. But our voices felt hushed, insignificant, in
the midst of this glory.
A
band of silver, fine and bright and beautiful – a perfect circle for a few
perfect moments – stood in the indigo sky in place of the flaming sphere. We shivered, as much from awe as from the cold
that encompassed us. Did this feeling,
this astonishment, this understanding-yet-not-understanding, possibly somewhat
resemble that of shepherds standing on a hill in Bethlehem two thousand years
ago? This thinking that you understand,
but knowing that you don’t? This awe and
fascination?
And
then there was a flash, a burst of silver and stardust and magical
brilliance. The glowing band ruptured,
and we knew that we were on the other side.
The horizons to the east and the west of our ridge began to glow again,
soft and blurry – pale yellows and faded orange sliding up into a rinsed blue
strip that pushed against the dark indigo dome.
Sunrise and sunset, simultaneously, all horizons the same. Baffling and indescribably beautiful. We reached out, pointing to the sky, yearning
to touch, to grasp, to hold this magic. We were giddy and gleeful, childlike. A plethora of emotions experienced in just a
snatch of time.
As
the light crept back in, perspective was off.
Trees in the foreground were too sharply focused, the background too
soft and fuzzy. The landscape appeared just
out of focus, as if created by a pointillist artist. The frosty glaze slid away, leaving a soft haze
in its place. The shimmer slowly dissolved
and the dirt beneath my feet became ordinary again. I neither wanted it to stay nor wished it
away. I simply rode, watching with
joyful curiosity as new wonders blossomed around me. The wind hustled off on its way. We unzipped our jackets a bit. Warmth returned, slowly, with the light. The
colors gathered intensity, finally blazing again. We were drawn back from the astonishment and
the splendor. Each in our own reverie,
we turned to the tasks at hand. We set
off to the routine of our days. We
returned to sameness and familiarity, yet we are not the same. We will carry always, firmly planted within
us, the glory and the mystery of the day.
©
Georgeann Kurtz 2017
