Eclipse

Did you see that oh-so-dangerous-and-glorious event that flooded our skies on August 21, 2017? I went down to Kansas to visit a relative who lives only about 9 miles from the region of totality—that coupled with a business trip for my husband during that week meant a 12 hour ride in the car after which we madly tried to locate a small town north of Kansas City where we could  park and watch.

Our location decided on, we got up the next morning for a grand day of packing five people, a picnic in a cooler, eclipse glasses, a pinhole camera (courtesy of the engineer and the 12-year-old), extra toilet paper and water and a dog into the car, starting early towards our destination to “beat the eclipse traffic.”

Little Plattsburg Missouri was our destination, and they rolled out the red carpet there for the expected eclipse watchers. They have a dandy little park with a playground and flush toilets and when we arrived it was decked out with extra porta-potties, a pulled pork and local sausages concession, free water from the Methodist Church, and a whole bunch of people in the mood for a good time. We had volunteers directing us where to park, and everyone set up a little tailgate party around their vehicle and … waited.

I couldn’t help thinking how similar this event might be to the preparations and celebration of eclipses in the stone age—except that perhaps—only perhaps, mind you, because I don’t think we have a very good idea of how much or how little they knew at that time about the movement of celestial bodies—perhaps they didn’t have as much warning to set up big doins like we did in the USA this year.

But like us in 2017, I have no doubt our ancestors grew quiet as the darkness settled during the interval of totality. In the skies above us in Plattsburg, the swallows appeared from nowhere, flitting through the faux twilight just as they do each and every night. As we listened darkness fell, and the birds and crickets let loose their night-songs.

I can certainly appreciate more symbolic meanings of eclipse for other events of this year—events where darkness obliterated sources of enlightenment that we have taken as permanent for some time in our democracy, our environment, and our cultures. In the midst of the darkness of the total eclipse, I was engulfed by a strange feeling of containment—breathlessness even—a feeling that the whole earth was somehow becoming less–alive.

It made my imagination soar all the more. I am fascinated with the metaphorical uses of heavenly bodies throughout human prehistory and history to signify the power and powerlessness of human beings.

As the light returned again, I noticed a feeling of relief, as if I had been waiting to exhale throughout the darkness, although I knew I had not. The swallows disappeared, the crickets silenced, the cicadas began to sing once again. The day we expected returned to us and proceeded to shower us with buckets of rain as the ominous clouds that we had watched lumbering towards us over the prairies all morning suddenly let loose.

We made our way home slowly, along with everyone else who had traveled distances to watch this phenomenal event. Pelted by rain and serenaded by squeaky windshield wipers, we began to discuss the next time we might see an eclipse, and where we would have to go to do it. That was sure a day taken out of a busy work-week to just enjoy one of the wonders of being human.