Eclipse morning dawned cold and clear! There’s a fair amount
of smoke in the air from the fires in Montana, but at 7,600 feet it’s not much
of a problem for us. We ate breakfast and all the Sandages packed up their
tents. Dave set up his eclipse telescope while Bill and Jen set up their
cameras, and talked about eclipse photography things while the rest of us hung
out. We had plenty of signal for our phones, so we saw people in Oregon post
about first contact – when the moon first starts to cover the sun. Oddly, the
eclipse traveled west-to-east, which Dave tried to explain to me but I was
unable to get my head around without making the moon go backwards which is
doesn’t. 
Finally it was time for first contact on the mountain. Dave
could see it first through the telescope, while the rest of us kept checking
and checking through our eclipse glasses. Finally we could see it too. Hooray!
Now we had nothing to do but wait. We played a game - first Josh and Jen (Jen won) and t
hen Josh and I (I won! Amazing!) We also worried, because clouds were starting to
form – the high, wispy kind that turn into real, sky filling clouds. To take our minds off worrying, Sally and Bill and I walked over to
her favorite rocks, which are jasper and quartz and sandstone and other things,
all different colors. I found a shell fossil! She has a pile of special rocks
on the picnic table and it is now displayed there. When we got back Josh joined
us for a game of 99, which I was doing very well at until I suddenly lost. By
then it was getting close to eclipse time, and I was wishing I had my straw hat
– there aren’t leafy trees to make crescents on the top of Casper Mountain.
We had been taking breaks to check on the progress of the
moon (satisfactory) and the clouds (worrisome), but as the eclipse got closer
the clouds started to look less threatening. We also paused several times to
get warm clothes and be awed by the quality of the light, which is somehow
different from twilight and yet the same. One thing I noticed more than I had
on the ships (this is my third total eclipse, but my first on land) was the
sharpness of the shadows and the crispness of objects in the distance. Dave had his camera attached to the back of
the telescope, but had gotten a special doohickey that let us also look through
the telescope, where we could watch the moon gobbling up the sunspots. With under 3 minutes left to totality Josh
suddenly sprinted towards the trucks – he’d forgotten to pour himself a shot of
Wyoming Whiskey’s special Eclipse Whiskey.
What to say? There was a hole in the sky with a bright
jagged corona. As the eclipse progressed, we all took turns looking through
binoculars at the bright red prominences – solar flares. One could even be seen
with the naked eye. We saw Regulus (at the time, we thought it was Mercury) and
Venus (misidentified as Jupiter). We saw the sunset all around the horizon.
The
wind died, the crickets were quiet. All these things are easy to describe.
What’s harder to describe is the excitement of it, the thrill, and the
mysteriousness. Scientifically it’s easy to explain. Emotionally, spiritually,
not so easy to explain the impact. Then suddenly Dave was yelling “20 seconds!
Binoculars down!” And then it was over.
Then there’s the letdown, for me at least. Post-eclipse
disappointment – can’t we do it again? Packing up the scopes and slowly taking
off layers as it warmed up. Josh and Jen headed out almost immediately, which
turned out to put them in 2 hours of traffic delay. The rest of us ate
sandwiches and chatted, heading back down to the cabin just before the sun came
completely out from behind the moon. The clouds had thickened and covered the
sun. It was only 1:00.
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