Eclipses. They’re fully explainable. Or are they? Yesterday’s solar eclipse, with totality within driving distance of many Americans, led to an inexplicable need to see it. April, we’re told, is the cruelest month and upstate New York is known for its “ever-changing skies.” I admit I was skeptical. Together with some friends we arranged to meet near the umbra, in Penn Yan, and to drive from there to totality up on Lake Ontario. As is typical in New York, the day started out fair, with a few high clouds. It was chilly, but this is April. Our destination: Fair Haven Beach State Park. The location was nice; we arrived early and found a good spot. The clouds, however, were willful and wanted to remind us, like last week’s earthquake, that we’re not really in charge here.
As the day went on—totality for us was 3:20 a.m.—more and more people came into the park. To its credit, with what must be a limited state budget, it absorbed many eclipse seekers without any trouble. By 3:00 the cloud cover was heavy-ish. Our friends had heard a sponsored eclipse speaker, however. Totality was nothing like even 99%. This would be of a different magnitude, even with clouds. I remember three previous eclipses. One in school with the pin-hole method where you really don’t see anything, one in Wisconsin after teaching one morning at Nashotah House, and the 2017 which I saw in midtown Manhattan. None of this prepared me for totality. Around 3:18 it started to look dusky. We could catch glimpses (but no photos) of the crescent sun. Within seconds it was completely dark. It was another of those transcendent earthly things, like the earthquake three days earlier.
Perhaps I’m getting old enough to realize that you can’t really describe such feelings. Maybe I’m getting sensible enough to understand such things are called ineffable for a reason. All the planning, worrying, anticipating, was for this moment. Yes, there were clouds overhead, but the park was full of cheering people. They too had come here for something extraordinary and to my surprise I found tears in my own eyes. I captured no photos of stunning clarity, but I had experienced something I’d heard about since childhood but had only glimpsed in the most crude of facsimiles before. We were able to experience a kind of rebirth that comes only after night. Conditions weren’t ideal, but are they ever? And an encounter with the numinous always comes on its own terms.
