Eclipse Monday arrived and we proceeded as planned.  Delicious French-pressed coffee and cinnamon rolls greeted our eclipse party guests, but the sky was covered in intermittent clouds, a mix of high and low layers, only occasionally offering a clear sunny view.  

This did not seem to affect the group.  They proceeded to continue their exploration of the campground and vicinity, logging birdcalls and trekking new hiking trails.

By the time the eclipse started, a little past noon, we all convened at our observing site.  Cabin H, it turns out, is the only cabin at Zuber’s that had a full view of Old Baldy, and it provided us with a perfect open area in front to view the eclipsed sun!

I had completed the setup of my cameras (more on this later).  In principle, they were automated enough that I could relax and enjoy the show with my friends.  I looked around and saw that our full group of black t-shirted eclipse observers had positioned their camp chairs to claim their personal view of the sky, making guesses about the sun’s location as it occasionally peeked through the clouds.  Some had binoculars, properly filtered of course, and their punched name cards were near at hand.

Over on top of Old Baldy we could see the silhouettes of many people who had climbed it– to get a closer look, I guess.  When they started striking odd poses and making wild gestures, I realized this was the gathering spot for the Wiccans and Druids.  And sure enough, whenever the clouds presented an opening that showed a partially eclipsed sun, they could be heard whooping and hollering at it!

Our group was less athletic, but just as excited.  Each time we could see the sun, it was further covered by the moon.  We attempted to make the pinhole name projections during these brief periods, but the lighting was a little too diffuse to yield a strong effect. 

Our vision is remarkably adapted to varying light levels.  It was not until we were at the cusp of totality, that we noticed the world dimming around us.  It had a soft amber feel.  One last glimpse of a thin crescent sun, and then we waited in the artificial twilight until… suddenly, in the span of a few seconds, the world turned to night.

The birds, which had previously been making noises, fell silent, and the humans all around the campground and at the top of Old Baldy, started howling.  The noises gradually ended as we took in the odd experience of darkness at mid-day.

Our visual systems kicked into scotopic night vision mode.  We could still see each other and could move around without stumbling (mostly), and we could see dark clouds overhead.  There was a brightening of them at lower angles, lit by 360 degrees of lunar twilight.

Our cameras on the other hand, were struggling to see anything.  The latest phone cameras have clever methods to make long time exposures, and I was able to take a few pictures during the darkness.  My GoPro video camera did not have that ability, and so it adjusted its sensitivity and exposures as the light dimmed until it could adjust no further.  The frames during totality are black, punctuated by someone’s occasional phone screen, and the lighting from within the cabin (who left the lights on?).

We spent our four minutes of totality musing about the darkness, and about what we might be seeing on the other side of the clouds.  Someone knocked over a pile of dishes, heard, but not seen by the GoPro recording.  We decided it was darker than it looked!

And then, in as few seconds as it went out, the lights came back on and we could see easily again.  Cheers were heard across the campground, or were they sighs of relief that the Wiccan spells of darkness had broken?

Our group was remarkably upbeat about the experience of not seeing the eclipse.  I was surprised at the lack of disappointment. I was expecting that after traveling more than a thousand miles to get here, to be at the exact time and place to witness a rare celestial event, that our guests would be despondent. Instead, they celebrated!

Yes, many of us had seen the 2017 eclipse, and were disappointed to miss a similar show.  But the others, who had not had the experience of totality, seemed to be impressed nevertheless!  We all now had the experience of the world turning dark for an unexplained four minutes.

As the moon moved along and the illumination brightened, we once again looked for glimpses of the partially eclipsed sun.  We posed for a “team photo”, and bottles of Prosecco suddenly appeared.  We all toasted to the celestial convergence we had just witnessed and indulged in a celebratory eclipse cake (earlier that morning Karen drove to the nearby town of Leakey to take delivery!)

The eclipse progressed exactly as predicted, and by 3:00 it was over.  We continued our various camping activities until we gathered again for Poldi’s “Eclipse Day Dinner” of salmon, potatoes and other dishes that one would never expect to enjoy in such a rustic setting.

At the end of this day that we had anticipated for so long, we were left with a sense of communion with the important objects in our sky, the sun and the moon, and with the important people in our lives, our friends and relatives. 

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Thor and Poldi’s Eclipse Party 2024
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