A Walker in the Suburbs

I took an evening walk last night, one week after the eclipse. Without thinking I headed west, toward the setting sun. 

I think of our nearest star differently now, having seen it, well, naked is not exactly the word. Exposed isn’t either. Transformed? Chastened? I won’t use Emily Dickinson’s phrase “without its diadem” because a corona is a diadem if ever I saw one.

It’s more that the sun and I (and millions of other people) now have a special bond. We’ve been through something together. So when I watch it sink low in the sky and redden the horizon, I think of when the horizon reddened in every direction. I remember the cool air and the bird song and the glowing white ring.

It’s nice to be reminded of all that.

(Photo: NASA)

Back home now after two 12-hour drives that bookended a day of planetary splendor. First, I want to credit the supporting cast, the resplendent redbud trees that lined the highway and gave my weary eyes something to feast on, counteracting the white-line fever. 

And the clouds themselves, which provided a light show late Sunday as crepuscular rays slanted down to the flat, black, Indiana fields, already plowed, waiting to be planted.  The clouds that politely parted on Monday, letting the sun and moon steal the show. The clouds that returned Tuesday, making for a muted and pleasant drive east.

But it was Earth’s star and satellite that stole the show. Our own sun, in a form I’d never seen before. Not blotted out but transformed, covered enough to let its true splendor shine forth “like shining from shook foil.” 

Since Monday afternoon I’ve been trying to put the feeling into words. It was awe-inspiring, yes. Once-in-a-lifetime, yes again. Most of all, it was comforting. It was light winning out in the end. 

(Monday, April 8, 3:04 p.m.)

The temperature dropped.  Birds sang their roosting songs. And then, the sun went away. All that was left was a ring of fire. 

Our safety glasses came off, someone blasted “A Total Eclipse of the Heart,” and for almost four minutes we gaped in amazement at the darkened world, the weird twilight, our hilltop transformed.

I looked up and around, to the left and the right, marveled at the 360-degree “sunset.” I felt a shiver up my spine that had nothing to do with the temperature. And then, it was over. 

“This was the universe about which we have read so much and never before felt,” wrote Annie Dillard in an essay called “Total Eclipse,” “the universe as a clockwork of loose spheres, flung at stupefying, unauthorized speeds.”

I looked at my photos, none of which captured the corona, and there, glimmering in the lower right-hand corner of one, was a single white dot. It was the planet Venus — in the middle of an Indiana afternoon.