Have you ever felt something that was impossible to describe? That made your heart pound out of your chest, and your knees feel weak? How do you explain that feeling? What do you say when you’re speechless?
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This Monday, a full solar eclipse swept across the Easter part of the US, from Texas through the midwest, ending in Vermont and Maine. A band of darkness, known as the path of totality, saw the full eclipse, where the moon perfectly blocks out the sun. People traveled
5 hours
three hours
10 straight hours
8 hours in the car
And some just walked out of their houses and looked up, to see the eclipse in places like
Terra Haute
Lawrence Indiana
Toledo Ohio
Oberlin College
And Poteau, Oklahoma
So today, we’re bringing you to the path of totality, through recordings of people witnessing this several-times-in-a-lifetime event, with friends, in groups, in parking lots, and with family.
“You’re very close to the Walmart parking lot”
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From Northwestern, students, including yours truly, arose at ungodly hours
5:30 am
And piled into cars. In our case, it was a Chrysler Pacifica.
[nat sound from getting in the car]
We brought an enormous amount of snacks
*waterfall snacks and intros*
What we did not bring was enough eclipse glasses.
After driving for about five hours, visiting a coworking space
My feet hurt. it’s a bathroom break
And eventually ending up at a culver’s, our group was ready to take on the eclipse. And in states across the country, other people were too. Groups varied in age, number of people, and location, but mostly, we all talked about birds.
[various speakers]
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Full solar eclipses are surprisingly rare events; they occur when the moon passes between the earth and the sun at the right distance to exactly cover it from our perspective, usually for about two or three minutes at a time. They’re rare enough that in any given group of people, most are seeing totality for the first time.
[various speakers]
Something about an eclipse also brings people together. There’s a sense of community that’s difficult to replicate. We got extra glasses from someone in the Culver’s drive-thru who saw us trading off our two pairs,
[nat sound]
Helped out a couple people along the way who didn’t have any,
[nat sound]
And talked to everyone else who was gathered to see the eclipse in the culver’s parking lot
[various speakers]
It’s impossible to not be excited about something that everyone is allowed to see; something we are all about to experience together, like it or not. Everyone was counting down the minutes.
[various speakers]
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In a famous essay about solar eclipses, Annie Dillard says that “Seeing a partial eclipse bears the same relation to seeing a total eclipse as kissing a man does to marrying him.” And there’s probably some truth to that. In person, and on recordings, the moment of totality is simply unmistakeable.
[various speakers]
Suddenly everyone’s a little kid again, looking up at the stars.
[nat sound]
Seeing the eclipse creates a physical, visceral reaction. It really is like falling in love.
I can feel my heart beating
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It takes your breath away.
[nat sound]
You feel a lot. Mostly joy.
[various speakers]
Sometimes relief,
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Gratefulness
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And feeling small under a celestial event so powerful it changes how the world looks.
We don’t really matter
And at the end, as totality ends and the sky grows lighter by the second, you might feel a little sad.
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Until the sun rises.
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It’s usually then that your words come back.
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And then, suddenly, the sun is back, you’re not allowed to look at it anymore, and you’re back in the real world, which has jobs and homework and traffic; lots and lots of traffic.
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But the best part about eclipses is that it’s a couple times in a lifetime event; the next one isn’t for a while, but it’s there.
In this case, the next one is in 2045. It may not be soon, but if you didn’t get to totality there’s always a second chance.
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Special thanks to Claire Foltz, Brazil Frueh, Rose Carlson, Eduardo Andrade, Georgia Kerrigan, and my neighbors, for recording themselves or asking their family and friends to record themselves during totality — and to all the people in the recordings.
[various speakers
“See you on the flip side, of the moon”
PLEASE keep that in there PLEASE
For WNUR News, I’m Mika Ellison
