The Path of Totality

I was skeptical, but my wife was committed. It wasn’t just the 4:00 am departure time, although if I’m honest that was a factor. Or the prospect of spending hours cramped in the seat of an elementary school bus, rattling our way northward in the company of school children, parents, and chaperones.

It just seemed sketchy, from the start.

I mean. The school trip was cancelled when the original destination was declared a state of emergency. A group of volunteer parents put together a backup plan, somehow commandeered a bus, poked a pin into google maps, and circulated an emailed invitation — no cost, it’s the trip of a lifetime, pack a lunch, BYOB! RSVP!

By the time I got involved, my wife had already répondez’d and was going whether I came along or not. Lunch for two was packed. BYOB? Beer? Baloney? Bourbon? So many questions, so few answers.

We load in the pre-dawn darkness. The bus is chilly, the children subdued. A camper’s headlights cast stark shadows as cooler boxes and canvas chairs are heaved hurriedly through the back door. Roll is called, and we’re off.

It’s April 8, 2024. The day of the Great North American Solar Eclipse.

And this little bus and its rag-tag collection of occupants are now officially Part of History.

I’ve seen partial eclipses a few times before. It’s interesting. The day feels overcast and dim even though there’s no clouds. If you poke a pinhole in a piece of paper, you can project a tiny replica of a sickle moon shaped sun. After a while you go back to your day.

So I don’t know. The 4 am departure was to beat the surge of millions of eclipse-chasing New Yorkers clogging every northbound route, but I’m thinking it’s mostly hype. I sip my coffee and pull up google maps. The thruway is green and clean. I check the weather — sunny in Essex.

We disembark at 7:30 am. Lake Champlain sparkles in the sun, the locals are walking their dogs. A charming little ferry boat leaves the dock and heads across the water. I find a comfortable stone by the water and take out my pipe. My wife joins some schoolgirls picking over shoreline rocks for fossils. It’s approximately 8 hours until totality. What’s not to like?

A total solar eclipse is a rare phenomenon, but entirely predictable. For the last 300 years or so, astronomers have been able to forecast the date of the next eclipse and its ‘path of totality’ — the geographic locations from which the moon will entirely block the sun. Although there is an eclipse somewhere on earth every 18 months or so, at any given location it may be 400 years between occurrences.

I look up from my pipe to see a huddle of parents consulting with the bus driver. All of them are consulting their phones and gesticulating wildly. I wander over. It seems the forecast is changing. Far to the west a bank of clouds has formed and is moving eastward.

I didn’t drive all this way for a less than even chance of the experience of a lifetime. Look there’s the ferry — let’s catch it and keep driving east.

But what then? The roads will be jammed, the rest stops will be full, where will we park? We had a plan. If we get on the ferry there’s no plan.

We’ll plan as we go. We have the camper — we’re self-sufficient. Everyone back on the bus. Let’s go. Let’s go.

And just like that we’re off. Burlington, Richmond, Stowe, Morristown. Every time we stop no sooner are the deck chairs out and the frisbees flying than the enthusiasts huddle over their phones and peer over their shoulders to the west. Back on the bus, back on the bus, only another hour further.

Centerville, Eden, Lowell. The roads are getting narrower and more congested. Town centers have been taken over by eclipse watching parties. Why not stop here? Or here?

It seems the Path of Totality is a restless road. The cell phone forecasters remind us that everyone on the bus is there voluntarily. It’s clear to me that the only thing that will stop us is the Canadian border. Or if we run out of gas.

Or time.

Because already now the shadow of the moon is racing across the Texas plains at 1600 miles per hour, arcing northward and eastward according to the immutable mathematics of planetary motion.

We pull into the parking lot of the village elementary school in Coventry with an hour to spare. A scattering of cars and vans have already staked out. License plates from Virginia. Cameras on tripods.

The sky is clear. This is it. Break out the baloney!

Soon we’re settled with our solo cups, cardboard eclipse glasses are passed around. Bring it on!

It’s a slow start, pretty much as I remembered it from other occasions. The light grew dimmer. The pinprick projection grew slimmer. The talk begins to go around. Just before totality there will be these weird wavy shadow bands wriggling across the ground. No one has ever been able to photograph them.

Sure.

But it’s a fair point. There will be thousands of photographers with fantastically sophisticated equipment fiddling with their F stops in the final seconds. What can I hope to capture with my trusty Pixel 7?

I decide to film the kids and move around to the front of the crowd. Three minutes to totality. The excitement is palpable. They’re hopping from one foot to the other, faces craning upward, huge grins.

Suddenly pandemonium breaks out. Shadow bands! Shadow bands! I look down and the hair prickles on the back of my neck. There they are weird and wriggling.

OK camera. Action.

Darkness descends precipitously. Exclamations fill the air. I see Venus! I see Venus! The atmosphere is electric. Diamond ring boys! The watchers bob and weave like line dancers in a trance. Bailey’s Beads! I pan across the crowd and swing the camera around and up into the night sky. A small fuzzy white donut enters the field of view and I press stop.

Got it.

I lower the phone. And suddenly I’m lost. The world of a few moments ago has dropped away. The shouts of the crowd have died.

An enormous silent silver circle burns in the sky. Faint fountains of white plume outward to fade among the stars. A single tiny fiery ember glows at its rim like the last spark of life in a frozen universe.

I grope to find my wife and hold her across the shoulders. It seems we are suspended in space and outside of time. There is nothing to think. Nothing to say. We wait.

And then a blinding point of light like a welder’s arc at the bottom of the ring.

Here it comes! It takes me a moment to recognize my own voice yelling at the top of my lungs as the point becomes a flash, sunlight washes over us and the rush of reality returns.

It was a long way home. Google maps is awash with red as every southbound artery is immediately clotted with returning eclipse chasers. We crawl south. Night falls. Thousands of taillights curve out of sight into the darkness.

All those people. What did they come to see? A reed shaken by the wind? A voice crying in the wilderness? Signs and wonders in the sky?

The bus bumps and rattles. I can’t sleep. I think about the future, the arc of history, the way things seem to be getting darker. All the pinprick prophets who foresee the shape of things to come.

How will it be at the end of time? Will mankind in our millions raise our eyes to the heavens when all but the last spark of hope has been extinguished? And when the new day dawns exclaim with one voice

Here it comes!