Tag: Kansas

A few days past the Great American Eclipse, I’m feeling my way through the sheer joy, possible meanings, and wild vitality of this experience. An eclipse holds and moves through many metaphors as the moon moseys toward, on top of, and past the sun, showing us new angles of light, and re-making the sun into a crescent-moon-shaped force. Day turns to night in a flash, shushing the birds and revving up the crickets. Shadows play out in unusual ways, framing light in winks, slivers, and crescents. The human world, at least many of us whether near totality or not, stops the ramble of everyday life to look up at the sky instead, flimsy eclipse glasses and cereal boxes in hand.

This eclipse, the first one in 99 years crossing the whole country, soared its moon shadow at speeds from 2,410 mph in Oregon, to 1,502 mph in South Carolina, translating into a minute or two or three of darkness, depending on where you were. Heavily anticipated in these parts due to our proximity to 100% totality, and weather-layered with herds of rambling storms, the eclipse, like most things in life, was not what we all expected. Some locals found the overcast skies completely dissolved the value of witnessing midnight at 1:06 p.m. Others, like my son Daniel, witnessed new glimpses of glory, as he wrote the other day on Facebook. His words capture all I experienced too, as stood with friendly strangers atop picnic tables near historic buildings and a long row of antique windmills in Hiawatha, Kansas. Here’s Daniel’s word:

The sky became darker and darker gradually, just like the 2 partial eclipses I’d seen that passed through KS over the last few years. The sun was maybe 80-90% obscured before clouds from a developing storm covered it. It became a grey gloom, lit by the brighter clouds near the Western horizon. Then totality happened, without warning.

It was a quick, smooth 3-4 seconds where it went from dusk to almost complete blackness. Looking toward the Southeast (a gorgeous vista of soybeans and glaciated hills), I saw utter blackness, lit feebly by a couple farm lights that popped on. But it was our horizons that were jaw-dropping.

To the west, the only truly open patch of sky exploded into a vivid constellation of colors, with a clarity I only see in the clearest sunsets. This sunset/sunrise though was pure orange, with amber pink rising above it, before shifting to deep blue, then black. In other spots of the horizon, more light was able to shine through. Due south, the developing storm that obscured our totality took on a rich, wet golden orange – The clouds hazy with light. Rain and verga from other storms was lit up from behind, producing a sharp but gentle gradient of color. The north was also lit up, where a line of violet/orange ran up the sides of young thunderheads, before sharply halting at the edge of the black above our heads. We jumped on the picnic tables around us and shouted at the sky, I couldn’t keep my eyes from the Western sunset/sunrise.

As totality ended, it was another 3-4 seconds of rising light – like a blanket being pulled out from me while trying to sleep. The southwest (where the eclipse was traveling towards) became blue-grey, the speeding, enveloping darkness making the small storm there look like a flood-wrecking monster. The sun then peaked out, and for just a second I swear I saw lumps of light instead of a pure crescent – the quick pulse of Bailey’s beads and diamond ring effect before the jagged line asserted itself and returned the elegant crescent of fire.

I can’t truly describe how quick the transition from light to dark and back was. With no distracting countdowns, eclipse apps, or selfies, these moments were short in their immediacy and long in ecstasy. Hell, even the sun was removed as a distraction. With the sun wrapped in clouds, there was no way I could time when it became completely covered. This gave our moment of totality a visceral shock of electric surprise and wonder. I will never forget this.

Like Daniel, I agree that “even the sun was removed as a distraction,” and instead, we experienced the fullness of the moment without the climax of a corona (although that’s obviously a stunning experience in its own right). Standing in the bowl of the sky, we were part of the vanishing and returning day as well as the wild lines, curves, and downpours of storms that, in the hours after, had their own kind of eclipse with thunder so loud and long that we were jumped out of our sleep and beds to take notice.

A few days later, the rain gauge still tells of the almost 5″ that fell, the hummingbird levitating toward the feeder seemingly takes no notice, the cicadas go on, and I’m back in the hideous (but comfortable) chartreuse chair on the porch. But the eclipse is still very much in my mind and on my heart as I feel its meanings and possibilities unfold over time, even since time paused for two minutes and 37 seconds in the middle of Monday to show us something beyond.