I’m a proud, self-confessed nerd. On any given day, I’m typically the only one in a group who knows when Feynman Day is, who subscribes to several NASA podcasts and who owns a signed copy of a Ray Bradbury novel.
So it isn’t surprising that I found the total solar eclipse in 2017 the seventh-coolest thing I’d ever experienced (I gave birth six times). We watched it from the parking lot of Leader World Headquarters, and it felt absolutely miraculous, even transcendent. I vowed, the moment it ended, to do whatever I needed to experience another one.
My husband is a nerd, too, but not in the same way. He declines to be as excited as I am about these kinds of things. He doesn’t hold much with fangirling, whether it’s for movie stars or cosmological phenomena.
But, between us, we’ve raised a pack of nerds.
I was delighted when my daughter, Hannah, agreed to fly in to experience the 2024 eclipse with me. I tried to explain how cool it would be, but it’s a tough concept to sell to someone who’s never experienced it.
She trusted me, though, and we set off early on Monday, April 8, to the Land of Totality. We drove to Cape Girardeau and planted ourselves at a lovely park just off I-55.
It was a gorgeous, sunny day, with a mild breeze blowing as we watched carloads of people slowly assemble for the event, which would happen just after lunchtime.
It was quite the bucolic scene. People enjoyed picnics spread out on the grass. Players tossed Frisbees around, dog owners paraded their charges on leashes or threw sticks for them to fetch.
We watched turtles sunning themselves on half-submerged logs in the lake, heard birds wheeling in the sky, smelled the fresh green grass and the dogwood blooms.
As the eclipse moment drew near, we debated about how to document it. Hannah’s husband, an accomplished amateur astronomer and astrophotographer, was in Arkansas with an astronomy buddy from college, busily imaging the event from several camera setups. So we knew any pictures we’d get would pale in comparison with his. Instead, we decided she would record a video on her phone.
As the moon crept across the sky, slowly but surely covering the face of the sun, the things I’d tried so hard to describe to Hannah began happening. The quality of the light grew somehow thin and golden, softening the details of the woods at the edge of the park. At about 90 percent totality, it was like a surreal sunset, as the temperature began to fall, the breeze stilled and the night sounds of birds roosting and peeper frogs singing began to be heard.
When totality came, the last sliver of light flashed into darkness and the world became still.
People all around the park cheered and clapped, but what you hear most clearly on the recording is my daughter’s sudden sobbing.
“Mommmmm,” she breathed softly. “Oh my God, I had no idea it would be this beautiful!”
We were extra lucky this year because the sun is in an electromagnetically active period. During the eclipse, its corona was ablaze with flares and wisps of light.
In that moment, I was so profoundly happy to be alive, to be seeing this miracle and to be sharing it with one of my favorite people on the planet.
The four minutes we spent in totality were amazing. It felt like all of us in that park were bound by some sort of mystical cosmic kinship.
But nothing lasts forever, and the moon crept on its inexorable journey across the face of the sun. Within 15 minutes, the light was returning to normal and people were packing up their blankets and Frisbees, finishing off their picnic snacks, taking one last snapshot and loading their cars.
A 2033 eclipse will be visible in a tiny sliver of Alaska, but most of North America won’t see another until August 2045. The next time a total solar eclipse will be visible in Jefferson County, according to NASA, is 2505.
Pretty sure I won’t be around then, but if I were, I’d be ready and willing to do it all again.
I thought the latest eclipse was the end of my “seeing Nature’s miracles” period. Then came early May, when conditions suddenly became ripe for the Aurora Borealis – the infamous Northern Lights – to be visible far to the south of their normal limits.
On the evening of May 10, I found myself standing in a field near our house with my husband and my grandson, oohing and aahhhing as faint swirls of purple and green light filled the sky.
Once again, there I stood, sharing something I never expected to experience with some of my favorite people on the planet.
I am so lucky. I have amazing images of the eclipse, courtesy of my son-in-law, and some lovely ones of the Northern Lights, taken by my husband.
But what I most cherish are the memories of experiencing the miracles of nature, and being able to elbow the loved one next to me and marvel, ‘Didja SEE that?”
I hope you, dear readers, will take my advice when it comes to experiences like this: Put down your camera. Someone else will take a much better shot of that rainbow or storm cloud or blooming flower or trickling stream.
Settle your soul and quiet your mind and just be there for whatever it is, in the moment, taking it all in and holding it in your heart. Pictures fade; but memories will live forever in your mind and the mind of the loved ones you’re lucky enough to share them with.