The big day – I would love to say it dawned bright and clear but alas it was cloudy – more cloud than blue sky, with what looked like two cloud systems at different heights, moving across each other.
But we kept our hopes up, with the help of Cathy’s Pancake Mega-Breakfast. Ecopellans and Solidarity Choristers know about this. Pancakes: with both sweet (mixed berries, whipped cream, mascarpone with cinnamon, bananas, maple syrup) and savoury (stewed mushrooms, bacon, ham, pepperoni) toppings. Sorry I didn’t get a photograph, I was too busy cooking and eating 😉 I did get a couple of shots of a pretty insect-pretending-to-be-a-leaf, who joined us while we breakfasted on the verandah.
We found a live telecast on one of the millions of TV channels (NB TV here is just like TV in Australia, only hundreds more crap channels to sift through to find the good stuff). The first contact in Oregon was just before 9am – they did indeed have lovely clear skies there, as they did in Wyoming, where the broadcast came from a mountain-top somewhere or other. It started to rain at Cozy Cabins.
About 10am – approx. 2 hours to first contact
We divided our time from then on between watching the TV, watching the clouds and watching Sooze drink Margaritas. 😉
The rain stopped, but the clouds kept coming.
There were tantalising breaks of bright sunshine (which allowed us to get a pinhole projector and a colander – yes, a colander) set up.
Through the looking-glass – 11am-ish
Robert, the owner and manager of Cozy Cabins, also came down and set up a mirror for photos – I wasn’t sure how this was going to work, but Dean worked on it and I believe got some good shots.
We had eclipse glasses, which I didn’t QUITE trust so only used very briefly and with my good eye closed. Dean also had some heavy-duty welder’s glass to protect his camera. Sue was trying the selfie technique they’d been showing on the TV. I was just sitting back and watching the clouds come and go, nipping back inside every now and then to catch footage of the totality everywhere else. And to refill my beer glass.
First contact for us was just before 12 noon – we were all out in the yard for this, glasses poised, with the sun just about to emerge… and then it was there, full in the sky, and the event had started. At first we couldn’t see much, but after a few minutes I risked a quick left-eyed look through the glasses and there was a clear indent in the circle of the sun. Very exciting!
It was going to take about an hour and a half to get to our approximately two minutes of totality. After about 15 minutes, the cloud came over again…grrrr… we raced inside to check satellite weather maps, which weren’t all that helpful for something so localised. It was maddening! We could see a great swathe of blue sky to one side of where we were, and patches on the other side, with banks of grey cloud making their way s-o-o-o-o-o s-l-o-o-o-o-w-l-y across the path of the sun. Gaaaaaaaaaaahhhhh!
We had another ten or fifteen minutes of sunshine before 1pm, and so saw the eclipse progress from about 40% to about 60%, when the light began to dim noticeably, then again we lost sight of the show.
Waiting, hoping, light fading…
We all kind of stopped talking about it – each of us in our own thoughts, dealing with the hope and preparing for disappointment in our own ways. Roy had said from the start that as long as we experienced the darkness, that was good enough for him. I felt that the main thing was to be with our dear friends, but was still feeling sad that I might miss out on something I’ve always wanted to see.
20 mins to totality
We counted down the minutes to totality. The sun was just near the edge of the cloud, where it was thin enough to let a lot of light through but still too thick to allow us to pick up the shape of the shadow on the sun’s face.
14…. minutes… to go….
It seemed to travel with the cloud, on the verge of breaking through but never quite managing to clear it. There were cars zooming up and down the road past the cabins as people tried to get clear of the cloud’s shadow at the last moment…
The crickets had started up as the light dimmed. We were never in total darkness – there was too much reflected light in the clouds – but a dove called in the forest behind us and the cicadas struck up.
And then… only two or three minutes before totality, the sun shook off the cloud and we could see it – a tiny sliver of bright orange through the glasses, almost like a new moon – we couldn’t believe it!!! We cheered and whooped and watched and held our breath – there was a patch of blue sky between the clouds and the sun was moving into it, the cloud was almost like a frame around the sun! PERFECT!
And then the sun was completely gone – and we had a minute or so to watch the ghostly corona, a pale starry glow around a black heart… just amazing. I never thought I’d see this, and at last here it was, before my very eyes. Oh. Wow.
All too soon it was time to put the glasses on again and await the return of that orange sliver, this time on the opposite side of the sun. Unfortunately I didn’t see the “diamond ring” effect – either because I just didn’t catch it or because the light was still quite diffuse because of the cloud and humidity. Roy thinks he saw it, though, just as was putting the glasses back on, so probably I just missed it.
We watched for a few more minutes, still letting off steam after the tension of will-we-won’t-we-see-it, and the thrill of being together to share the experience. I’m so glad I have had the opportunity to do this with Roy – we will always have this amazing memory to hold and look back on as we continue our journey together. ❤
The cloud came over again after another 15 or 20 minutes – HOW LUCKY WERE WE!!!! Roy and Sue decided this was a good time to have a hot tub – Sue was still whooping and saying “I can’t believe it”, and Roy had that contented look he gets when something really, really pleases him. I felt elated but also sad that Alana and Lou and Mum and the rest of my family couldn’t be here with us. I would love to have been able to share it with them, too. 😦
We had one more look as the clouds passed again, to show us the very end of the eclipse – the last few minutes as the brief meeting of these distant objects in our line of sight slipped away, and sun was whole and the moon invisible to us again. Fantastic.
We spent the rest of the afternoon just feeling happy. Hal cooked a great BBQ for dinner and Robert brought around some potato salad. We added leftover mushrooms and Sue’s chili from the night before, and a selection of condiments. Very satisfying.
As it grew dark, Dean lit the fire again and we sat around it for a while, enjoying our last evening together and letting the experience (and a good-sized glass of Jameson’s, at least for Dean and me) wash over us. A wonderful day.
When Dean sends me his pics I’ll post them.
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