Most people have difficulty moving on from unpleasant happenings but, strangely, seem to be in a great hurry to move on and forget about anything enjoyable or interesting. Keep talking about something you enjoyed for too long and someone is sure to complain, "Why are you still talking about this? That was yesterday. We've moved on."
I don't know that I'm any better than anyone else at moving on from the bad stuff but I am very much against extending the drama. But the enjoyable stuff? I want to keep on enjoying it, to keep on talking about it and sharing with friends. And right now, a week after the sun and moon performed their brief dance, I want to keep on talking about it.
There was a total eclipse when I was a kid but I was in the wrong place. Then there was one when I was a young adult and again I was in the wrong place. And it was heavily overcast that day so I din't even get to observe a partial eclipse. I was sure that I wasn't meant to ever see a total solar eclipse.
But finally, in 2017, there would be one very close. We could have driven there. I don't know why we didn't. I bought the glasses and we watched from our driveway. And it was very cool but at the same time a little disappointing.
I didn't expect that there would be another solar eclipse any time soon but I Googled it anyway and was amazed that there would be another so soon and so close to us. It would be only a little less than a three hour drive to reach the path of totality and I was determined to get there.
With all the traffic and road construction it ended up being a more than four hour drive. We originally planned to go to Talimena Senic Drive and stop at one of the overlooks. But when we stopped at the Love's on I-40 my husband started up the GPS because we hadn't been that way for a long time and Google informed us that Talimena State Park was closed.
I don't know if that meant the entire scenic drive was closed but we decided to keep heading east to Russellville Arkansas. The traffic was bumper to bumper and very slow, often completely stopped. It was clear that we weren't going to make it to Russellville in time so we stopped at a rest stop near Ozark.
At Ozark totality would only last for two and a half minutes instead of more than four but other than that it turned out to be the perfect place. There were a lot of people there but it wasn't a huge crowd. There was a huge open grassy area and there were separate little family groups all over.
Now I hope you're still with me because all of that was merely introduction to what I really want to say. And what do I want to say? So much. How and where do I begin? I was actually prepared for it to be less of a big deal than I had always expected. On the contrary, it was even more than I could have imagined.
The first thing is, an eclipse makes one more aware of the solar system. We all learned about it as children and we accept that it is real (Well... at least most of us do.) but during a solar eclipse you feel that it's real, the same way trees and houses and cars and anything you can see and touch are real.
We sat in the lawn chairs we brought with us. It couldn't have been a better day. The weather was perfect, comfortably warm with just a few thin cirrus clouds. We looked at the sun through our eclipse glasses for a few minutes at a time. We looked at our phones. I checked the NASA website with its live countdown. I checked social media. We watched the other people.
Within two minutes of the time we looked continuously, watching the cresent sun grow thinner and thinner until it was just a thin, short line, then just a dot, then gone. I took off my eclipse glasses and looked at the dark disk with the ring of white fire. And at the strange twilight all around us. I cannot adequately describe how amazing it was.
It was extremely brief and as we drove home in traffic that was even worse than the traffic on the way there, I thought about how all the best times of our lives are very short, often only moments. We should, as much as possible, be fully there for those moments. It's easy with something like an eclipse. We know it's coming; we're ready to pay attention. Many more ordinary good times pass us by because we're too busy to pay attention.
The next total solar eclipse will be in 2044. If I'm still alive I will be 86. It's not impossible that I will get to see it but I think very unlikely. Monday, April 8th, 2024 was truly once in a lifetime.
