The Solar Eclipse

I don't want to put too much emphasis on how worried I was that something would Go Wrong with the eclipse (or, with our ability to see it, more accurately), because I did try to rein my worries in and think Coping Thoughts. Yes, this was something I'd been looking forward to for a long time, but it wasn't the MOST important thing EVER, and it was only two minutes out of a lifetime, and we could always look forward to 2045, after all! We would have a fun time being together as a family even if it was cloudy…or smoky…or there were apocalyptic crowds and gas shortages and so forth. I had reserved the rental house and ordered the eclipse glasses a year early (plus we had the ones my brother's family gave us for Christmas…) so everything was as ready as it could be and there was nothing else I could do! I told myself all of these things repeatedly, but I also lay awake worrying more than once in the months leading up to August. I was also somewhat concerned that I'd have the baby right during the eclipse and miss it that way.

We studied eclipses for school, making models and so forth, in the week before we left for Idaho. This scale model on a yardstick (with the moon and earth correctly sized and distanced from each other) was fun. You can see the small dot of shadow that the "moon" (at the top of the yardstick) casts on the "earth" (by Daisy's right hand). That dot of shadow is the spot where totality occurs! Where it sweeps across the earth you have the path of totality.

When we got to Idaho I felt some relief that we were actually THERE in the right vicinity, but we were staying an hour away from the path of totality, so we knew we'd still have to brave the roads on the morning of the eclipse. We went to Yellowstone and had a fun few days, but I tossed and turned all night Sunday night, dreaming vague and foreboding dreams. As it turned out, we had no problem. The traffic was slightly more dense than usual for a Monday morning, but there were very few delays. As we got to Rexburg I finally felt like I could relax! We were in the right place and the sky was clear and I wasn't in labor. Yay!

We loved Bear World last time we stayed in Island Park, so we decided to make that our eclipse-watching base. It was a perfect place in which to wait around, because there are fun little rides for the kids to go on over and over and over, and bathrooms close by, and cute baby bears to watch.

While we were studying eclipses for school we also made solar eclipse shirts. Aren't they cute? It's only because I ran across a picture of this shirt and said to myself, "Hey, I bet we could make those!" I just cut out circles of contact paper in varying sizes and stuck one on the front of each shirt. Then I gave the kids glow-in-the-dark fabric paint and brushes, and they painted scribbly lines and rays of paint on and around the contact paper circle. (You can't really mess this up!) After the paint dried, we took off the contact paper circles and it left these lovely likenesses of the sun's corona shining during totality. Lots of people asked where we got our shirts and the children were very pleased to say "We made them!"

Bears. These are in the drive-through section of Bear World. So many bears! We loved it.

There's a petting zoo area at Bear World too. Junie got to see her friend the pig again. She told me later: "A man said to me, 'Would you like to take that piggy home?' and I said I WOULD!" Then she added, somewhat wistfully, "But he was probably just joking. I'm not sure he even works here." You could tell she was just the tiniest bit hopeful that he'd actually been offering the pig to her. Sweet little girl.

After a while the eclipse started! You couldn't really tell until you put the eclipse glasses on. "It's a moon!" said Teddy.

Teddy really, really loved the Bouncy Car ride. It seemed fitting, after Goldie loved it so much last year. He rode on the ride again and again. It's great because there are no tickets or anything, just unlimited rides, and hardly anyone waiting in line. We were so pleasantly surprised at how UNcrowded it was!

Teddy thinks the word "plum" is really funny, and he was convinced this was called the "Plum Ride." Although I think they are blueberries? Anyway, he describes this as "the plum ride that takes me up-up-up-up-UP? [squeak] And drops me down!"

We had fun making and seeing the shadows. One guy had a sort of woven-mesh hat which was making really cool multi-crescented shadows! I saw cool pictures someone took of crescents through a colander too. I wish we'd thought of that!

In between watching the kids on the rides, Sam and my mom and I loved watching the baby bears play and wrestle each other. And we reminisced fondly about the time Abe got to feed the baby bears!

Bouncy Cars again

Bouncy cars with Grandma

I don't know if these glasses were actually protecting his eyes at all.

The "Plum Ride" turned out to be a good eclipse-viewing spot

After awhile the light suddenly started to seem…strange. I included this picture because it sort of shows it. It's hard to describe. It wasn't exactly like evening light. Maybe sort of like winter sunlight? Everything seemed kind of…bluish and slanted. And cool! There was a definite cooling of the air. We'd been slightly hot and now we were very obviously cool. 

This shows the odd light, too. The sky is summery blue but the light is…well, it's just wrong. You could feel it.

And then the animals started going to sleep! This was one of the most interesting things, I thought. The bears and the sheep and the goats and the ducks in the petting zoo—they all just lay down and started sleeping! I had heard that animals did this during eclipses, but I thought, "Surely they wouldn't bother, just for the two minutes the sun darkens?" They started sleeping before that, actually. I suppose it was when the light started changing. But I was quite surprised they did it at all!

By this time everyone had stopped even attempting to do anything but stare at the sky. The light was too strange, the cold was too strange…you couldn't ignore it. Teddy was shivering and had goose bumps! You could see the dark shadow of the eclipse racing toward us across the sky. It looked like you were looking into…dusk. So unearthly!

I had read an article before the eclipse about how you shouldn't waste your time trying to take pictures of the eclipse, because they probably wouldn't be very good anyway, and you didn't want to take up the whole 2 1/2 minutes fumbling with your camera! But Sam thought maybe he could get everything set up and figured out beforehand so we could at least take one picture. It was really hard to get the exposure right because the sun was SO bright, even at partial brightness!

And then when the last sliver of sun disappeared and the eclipse was total, it was suddenly SO dark! Amazingly dark! And the bright glowing corona of the sun immediately leapt into view. All the camera settings Sam had estimated and calibrated were wrong. The contrast was really dramatic; much more than we'd guessed it would be! Luckily, Sam is a lot faster and more proficient with the camera than I am, so he made some adjustments and got a few pictures anyway—all in just a few seconds so he didn't miss out on anything. I was so glad, because while the pictures can't really do it justice, the sight of that blazing corona is still pretty amazing:

I didn't remember to notice, but the kids said their eclipse shirts started glowing. And as soon as the sun disappeared fully behind the moon, the bears woke up and started pacing and running around! They seemed very disturbed, or excited! I don't know how they even could tell a difference, if they were asleep, but maybe they weren't fully asleep?

But, anyway, I knew just how the bears felt! We all felt the same: awed and humbled and nervous and excited all at once. Everyone was talking and marveling in hushed voices. You couldn't help it! Everything was just too amazing. It felt like you needed to be reverent. You could see a few stars in the sky, and all around in every direction, there was an orange glow like the sunset. 

And it was silent! A sort of cheer had gone up when the darkness fell, but it was more a sound of awe than of celebration. Somewhere beneath the collectively drawn-in breath of the crowd, and the murmurings of amazement all around, there was a deep, profound silence, like the whole earth was holding its breath. I had heard, earlier, that people sometimes cried during total eclipses, and I thought that was funny. But now I understood, and I was crying myself. I felt so much…I guess it was a mix of amazement at God's creations, and awe at the absolute beauty and vastness of the heavens, and surprise at my own smallness beneath it all. "Now I know that man is nothing, which thing I had never supposed."

Those tiny red glowing spots are called "Bailey's Beads"—they're areas of hills and valleys on the moon which refract light differently as the sunlight bends around them.

I was laughing and crying and saying to Sam, "Wow! I can't believe it!" and the kids were turning all around and marveling, "Look at Venus! Look at the sun! Look at the orange sky!" hardly knowing where to look or what to say. I really couldn't believe it. How was this really happening, and I was actually there to see it?

And then, after what seemed like an impossibly short amount of time, the sun was peeking out again in its "diamond ring" shape. I felt so sad that it was ending already! The sky lightened amazingly fast, and the orange horizon brightened again. Everyone started clapping and cheering, and after a few seconds there was a sort of roar in the distance. I thought maybe it was another group of people cheering, and then I realized it was the cars on the freeway starting to go again! I hadn't realized that they'd ever stopped, but that deep silence during totality was partly because everything and everyone under the shadow had just…stilled. You don't realize how much ambient noise is constantly around you until it's gone!

The bears sort of shook themselves, and stopped racing around and went back to normal, and we humans did the same. Our voices went back to normal. The light felt normal. The temperature raised. (All this seemed to happen faster on this end of the eclipse, the going-away end, than it did when totality was approaching. But maybe that was just my perception changing.) But we couldn't stop talking and thinking about how amazing it had all been. I was hoping and hoping that my brothers in Kansas City would get to have as good of a view of the sun as we'd had! (They didn't, it turned out—it was cloudy where they were! I was so sad they hadn't come to Idaho with us!) 

I asked Sam if he could think of a comparable experience. We have seen lots of cool things in our lives—more amazing things than I ever imagined I'd see! "What about seeing the Colosseum?" I said. "Or when we came around that corner and saw the towers of St. Basil's Cathedral looming up from Red Square?"

"Not even close," he said, and I agreed. The only thing we could think of to really compare it to was the births of our babies, because of the way it brought out feelings of amazement and eternal-ness and closeness to God. I felt…part of the universe, and aware of it, in a way I've rarely felt before. I can understand, now, those people that chase eclipses all over the world! We met some people at Yellowstone that had been to see five or six other total eclipses. "It's worth all the trouble," they said. And it was!

In fact, I was (and am) a little worried to tell people how great it was and how much I loved it, because I didn't want my friends who hadn't made it to the path of totality to feel bad! I suppose maybe the profoundness of my feelings was partly because this had been a dream of mine for so long. But there really was something about it unlike any other experience. For weeks afterwards I looked at the sky and the stars and the sun differently: Someone made all this; someone placed us here! God really is there, aware of us and orchestrating even the heavens for our good. I knew it before, of course, but seeing the eclipse placed those facts into…real life…for me in a new and unexpected way.

We stopped to see the Rexburg Temple on our way out of town. Everyone looked so cute in their eclipse shirts! (The kids had made one for my mom too.)

Marigold posed in the marigolds.

We were so grateful that everything worked out for us to be in the right place to see the eclipse. We felt like we couldn't have been luckier! And the lines of the song kept running through my head over and over: 

"I'm glad that I live in this beautiful world Heavenly Father created for me."