[Short version]
Total Eclipse 2017: Ethereal. Surreal. Beautiful. Outstanding. Amazing. Awe-inspiring. Heavenly. Exciting. The experience cannot be fully captured with pictures, video, or even words. And it was not nearly long enough! Thinking about it makes me emotional...even more so that I may not ever see another total eclipse again! And more emotions at the thought of how much more majesty and heavenly wonders we may witness in eternity with God!
"The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
Day after day they pour forth speech;
night after night they reveal knowledge.
They have no speech, they use no words;
no sound is heard from them.
Yet their voice goes out into all the earth,
their words to the ends of the world.
In the heavens God has pitched a tent for the sun.
It is like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber,
like a champion rejoicing to run his course.
It rises at one end of the heavens
and makes its circuit to the other;
nothing is deprived of its warmth." - Psalm 19:1-6
[Full Version]
We traveled from our home to my sister Tiffany's house in Tennessee (normally a 5-hour drive) in about 7 hours on Sunday, August 20, 2017 – the traffic was pretty thick most of the way, with some stop-and-go points along the way. We traveled back home from Tennessee in about 9 hours on the evening of Monday, August 21, 2017 – it was an exhausting, mostly bumper-to-bumper traffic the entire way until we got within about 40 minutes of home. We saw license plates from so many different states! If we were playing the license plate game, we would have rocked it! On the last leg of our journey on Sunday, we stopped for gas about 45 minutes away from my sister's house and there were people selling eclipse glasses for $10-15+! We got ours at Walmart for $1 about 3-4 weeks before the eclipse. It’s a good idea to be prepared!
We watched the eclipse from Tiffany’s house on the side of a mountain with a group of about 11 people and it was awesome! Tiffany read Psalm 19 – beautiful and fitting Scripture for this event! She did a demonstration of how an eclipse works using a big kickball and a small fist-sized ball. I love how when we’re with Tiffany, we experience things in “high definition” and/or with a new perspective! We took a group picture and then sweet Jasper went down for a nap around 1 p.m. just before the moon started to eclipse the sun. Everyone did a craft as well – Tiffany had black construction paper, chalk, and circular cardboard cutouts to trace around to make the moon on the paper. We whisked the white chalk away from the circle to make it look like the moon eclipsing the sun with the sun’s beautiful corona whisping around the moon.
We were all excited when we saw the first sign of the moon eclipsing the sun, and our anticipation built for the next hour and a half as we waited for the incomparable event – totality. We didn’t want to look too long, but we wanted to keep watching at the same time! We used solar eclipse glasses and an awesome obsidian rock disc (about ½” – ¾” thick) to view the eclipse. While we waited for totality, we busied ourselves with taking pictures of each other. We watched and took pictures of the crescent moon shapes of light on the ground created by crescented sun shining through the branches of trees and through straw hats on paper or our clothes. We tried different techniques for viewing the eclipse, such as through homemade eclipse viewing boxes (empty cereal and macaroni boxes), looking at the sun shining on a parked car thru our glasses, or letting the sun shine thru binoculars onto a piece of paper. The eclipsed sun went from looking like a Pac-Man to a crescent.
As totality drew near between 2-2:34 p.m., our excitement grew as our environment changed. Everything became…ethereal. The light in the atmosphere around us grew dim with a surreal sheen that is hard to describe, but it was somewhat like a mix between dusk and the dim lighting caused by an approaching storm (except there was no storm). The air grew cooler and breezes picked up when there previously had been none. The horizon began to look like the sun was going to set! Crickets and katydids began to chirp as it grew darker. We positioned our chairs and bodies to view the valley below to see the umbra race across it (which we all missed) and to see the totally eclipsed sun (which we couldn’t take our eyes off of)! Minutes before totality, we all began to hear a humming sound. We looked around at each other wondering what it was and several of us said “bees!” There must have been bees swarming in their hive somewhere nearby – at first, we thought the swarming was coming from Tiffany’s bee box, but we later found out that there were no bees in the box. The swarming of bees was unexpected, and it was cool to have that unique to our experience of the eclipse. In minute or so before totality, we could all see the shadow bands from the moon on a white car parked next to us and on a white sheet that we had laid on the ground. Not everyone gets to witness shadow bands during an eclipse, but it was cool!
I wish I’d been prepared with my binoculars already around my neck when totality occurred at 3:34 p.m. because it went by so fast!! Just before totality, we saw the diamond ring effect (which we saw again at the end of totality and which I’ll explain momentarily)! We couldn’t help ourselves, but we all let out collective squeals, shouts, oohhs and aaahs as the moon totally eclipsed the sun. It was an experience that made me want to cry when it was all over because I didn’t want it to be over. (The only other thing more powerful than that ethereal experience that I have had was the dream I once had about Jesus returning and the Holy Spirit moving through the room I was in like a massive wave.) It was ethereal. Surreal. Beautiful. Outstanding. Amazing. Awe-inspiring. Heavenly. Exciting. The experience could not be fully captured with pictures, video, or even words. And it was not nearly long enough! Thinking about it makes me emotional...even more so that I may not ever see another total eclipse again! (We’ll probably try to see the one in 2024 as a family, but you never know if a storm cloud will cause you to miss it even if all else goes well!) And more emotions at the thought of how much more majesty and heavenly wonders we may witness in eternity with God!
I’ve seen a partial eclipse before and it is very cool but nothing compared to witnessing a total eclipse. I wish I’d had a telescope! We saw red prominences (eruptions from the sun) around the edges of the moon. We saw Mercury right next to the sun (which is rare to see because it is so close to the sun)! We saw the sun’s beautiful, indescribable corona (my favorite part) and I didn’t want to take my eyes off this gorgeous sight that our Creator orchestrated. Gazing at it through the binoculars was amazing and I wouldn’t have stopped except that we only had one pair and I wanted Tom to be able to view it through the binoculars too. To me, watching the corona and eclipsed sun was like hearing God’s voice and witnessing His Glory in a way I never had before…and I didn’t want it to end. Behold, the Glory of the Lord!
The instant in which totality ended as the moon moved away from the sun, we witnessed the amazing diamond ring effect as the first bright glow of sun peaked out from around the moon while the rest of the sun still appeared as a ring around the moon…effectively appearing like a diamond ring! I’ve never seen a more touching and yet heart-rending burst of light! It made me gasp in awe and wonder, and yet feel a great well of emotion – excitement and amazement mixed with much sadness because I knew it signaled the end of totality. As we all tried to collect ourselves and carry on about how amazing it was, the sun continued to slip back out from behind the moon, the light came back around us, the cool breezes left, the temperature rose, the bees stopped humming, and the crickets stopped chirping. Every now and then, we’d look skyward again with our glasses to watch the eclipse phasing back out. We weren’t nearly as attentive to the denouement of the eclipse because were too exhilarated by experiencing totality and saddened that it was over. Before the eclipse was entirely over, most from our group had left to go home. We started packing up our things to leave also, but I couldn’t help but run outside every now and then to see the eclipse phasing out while wishing I could see totality again.
We left Tiffany’s house at 6 p.m. for a 5-hour drive back home. Our 5-hour trip took 9 hours and we got home at 3 a.m.! Bumper to bumper, stop-and-go traffic almost the entire way back except for the last 40 minutes or so. We were exhausted, but the trip was most definitely worth it!
The next solar eclipse in North America will be on April 8, 2024. If you’ve never seen a total eclipse, I highly recommend that you try to see one! The next one will most likely be the last one many of us will have a chance to see in our lifetime.
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