It was a day of looking into the sun.
Of driving east along Highway 30, from Indiana to Ohio, the sky blazing with the morning sun, my shades and the car’s visor wholly inadequate. A day of meeting my daughter halfway (her idea) between our place in Indiana and hers in Columbus, in a neat little town that we didn’t know would be neat, but that we did know was in the solar eclipse’s path of totality in the afternoon of April 8, 2024.
It was a day of the two of us meeting at a park that Google Maps had informed me was located by the town’s two reservoirs, featuring lots of open space. We knew there was a parking lot, along with restrooms and picnic tables, but we didn’t know whether parking would actually be available. Thankfully, it was.
A day of leaving early and arriving early to stake our claim to observe the total eclipse, in the plains of Ohio, far away from crowded urban centers.
We weren’t the only ones who had that idea. The parking lot soon filled with cars from Michigan and even far off Missouri.
A day of first walking the sundrenched 3.5 mile trail around the reservoirs as we had time to spare, walking in the unusually warm spring weather, in the breeze of the Ohio’s flat land. Of enjoying a picnic in the shade of the dog park’s terrace, and then settling on a blanket by the reservoir, along with other observers, who sported fancier equipment like lawn chairs and sun umbrellas propped against the wind.
Of learning it’s pitch black behind those solar eclipse glasses.
Wearing them you can’t see anything unless you lift your head towards the sun, which, as the spectacle begins, starts smiling at you like the Cheshire cat, its grin slowly thinning. Of fumbling between sunglasses and solar eclipse spectacles, their stiff-paper temples uncomfortable to tuck behind your ears. Of discovering that the cell phone camera cannot capture the moon crouching in on the sun, even if you hold the solar eclipse spectacles in front of its lens.
Of realizing that, if you hadn’t been informed that the moon was eating away at the sun, you wouldn’t know.
The day would just seem a tad overcast, plausible as diaphanous clouds streaked the sky.
This was not my first eclipse, but the first for which I made a special trip, the first I took the time to observe. Back in May 1994, my colleagues and I had simply stepped outside our Chicago office building when totality reached its peak. It had been a warm day, and the main thing I remember was the temperature drop as the sun disappeared behind the moon. My daughter remembered the same from experiencing the solar eclipse of 2017 on a piping-hot summer day in Nashville.
Now it was a day of traveling, facing the glare of the sun both on my drive there and on my return, made utterly worthwhile by the eerie experience of witnessing the sun slip behind the moon.
All of a sudden, you could look into the sun.
For about two minutes you could look up at it and see only its hallow, the sky dimmed to a glassy sapphire.
Suddenly sunset reigned, the horizon glowing golden at 3 p.m., gnats flittering about.
Only that moment of otherworldly dusk was noticeable to the non-observer.
One could understand, my daughter mused, why ancient people worshipped the sun. What power it has over our earthly existence! And how scary it is when the sun turns dark in the middle of the day, without any announcement observable to the naked eye.
It was an extraordinary moment, one that sent us hopping for joy on our blanket, giddy at our good fortune of having planned this trip to experience this, of being granted a clear sky, and finding the ideal spot to observe.
A moment you had to be there for, an experience no camera could capture.
The space around you changes, in an instant, and snaps right back to regular sunshine. Once the disk of the moon lets the first ray of sunlight flash past, it is day again.
It was an experience that still has me jittery the next day, as I write this.
How amazing, too, to be able to witness this celestial spectacle, one that we could plan to see, unlike, for example, the aurora borealis, or shooting stars, which we only might be lucky to catch, even with the best plan.
It was a day of staring at the sun, of being charged with joy and wonder, of driving home into the sunset, the sun’s golden orb hanging on the horizon as if it hadn’t been up to much earlier on.
A day of listening to one John Mellencamp album after another on the drive, mainly through his native Indiana, before putting his song Blue Charlotte on repeat as dusk descended. Its “Look away” refrain was a good end to this big day.