Coming soon

I watched the eclipse from Lion’s Lake here in Washington, with my sister Linda. Half the fun was experiencing it with her, and, for both of us, with all those strangers. Everyone aa excited and talkative as kids. Everyone watching the same direction and happy before anything’s even happened yet, like at a parade.

In the last few seconds before totality you could hear the cheer building up, people urging it on. If the moon needed a last little push, we gave it. Then—YAY! And applause! It was like 9 p.m. on a summer night, except the light was clear, not tinted like  sunset. There was light enough to see, but dark enough that my camera started using its flash.

And the insects started singing! 

We watched the moon and sun without our special glasses now, a black circle with a lion’s mane of white fire. After a few minutes, a young girl shouted, “Look for the diamond ring!” And there it came, a portion of the sun edging back into view, and then the same girl shouting to all, “Glasses back on!” 

Right after that a cheer went up behind me. A family next to us—from Peoria, Illinois, we learned—had spread a white blanket on the ground to catch one last phenomenon that sometimes follows totality and sometimes doesn’t, but this time did—about 15 seconds of shadows rippling from west to east across the blanket like fast waves.

Afterwards I sat for a few minutes where people had to file by to reach their cars, asking, “Where’d you guys come from?” Only one group was from here. The others were from…

“Iowa.”

“Battle Creek, Michigan.”

“Boston.”

“Illinois.”

“Wisconsin.”

“Troy, Missouri.”

“Arkansas.”

“Germany.”

I guess they all thought I was some official representative of the town. “Thank you for having us!” “You have such a pretty town.” “Thank you for letting us watch it with you.” So I played along. “Thank you for picking Washington...thank you for joining us...have a save drive back...see you at the next one.”

A rare, favorable alignment of the cosmic and local.