Live Event: The Great American Solar Eclipse

Is it possible for something to be amazing and kind of a let down at the same time? 

The word that comes to mind for yesterday’s eclipse experience is “confusing.” 

For several months, Columbia has prepared and planned for the event. Parties and performances and precautions have abounded since early Spring. The entire region was aware of our direct path status and the likelihood we would experience an influx of visitors. It was a tourism boon and one Columbia and its surrounding hamlets took full advantage of. Most impressively, the events of Eclipse Weekend were all very well publicized, rather inexpensive, and included free eclipse glasses. The only real price gouging I witnessed was the City of Columbia’s parking deck rates bumped up to a $10 event fee from their usual $1.25 per hour. But this was going to be a big deal, right? 

So we should make it one or at least participate in the well-organized suchness that others had orchestrated. We settled on the Blythewood Total Eclipse of the Park event at Doko Meadows which was both nearby and small enough that I was confident we would have a good experience. We packed coolers (against the rules) and took our own chairs and glasses with us. We listened to the live music performances and joined in the countdown. 

As the sky darkened and totality occurred, we whooped and wailed with the rest of the crowd. 

And then it was over. 

My friend Melanie’s kid said it first, “Can we go now?” 

Then HB chimed in, “It’s so HOT!” 

We had been sweating for over an hour, our hair stuck to our faces, ice cream melting before we could use the spoon on it, backs of thighs soaking the canvas tailgate chairs. We had eschewed the shade for a space in full sun and were paying for it. 

Then the moon began to assert itself and the eerie light of lunar shadow cooled the park. Not quite twilight, but a greyish flattening of shadow and light. There hung the strange stillness of celestial motion and the curtain of a black and white movie descended. The crowd turned glasses-covered faces skyward, mouths gaping in awe. 

I said to Melanie, “There’s a strange vulnerability here, like in a horror movie. As if this is the moment when, distracted by the sky, all humans are annihilated by invading aliens.” 

I cannot have experienced the Total Solar Eclipse without writing about it. There’s so much magic and mystery in it as to be completely surreal. During Totality when we removed our glasses and looked at one another, while the cicadas’ sound surged and the midday felt like late twilight, my writer’s brain was cataloguing details. 

Then it was over and we went back to day drinking, live music, exit traffic, and the Monday-ness of the day. 

It’s in the dichotomy of “rare celestial event on Monday” that my discomfort exists. 

The eclipse was everything I expected it to be. The park event and live music and visiting friends and open-air boozing were all I would have wanted. Yet, somehow, I feel let down. Like maybe I should I have also expected some cosmic insight, some spiritual revelation, or some life-altering change. Except eclipses are a predictable pattern, a scientific reality of a steady and persistent relationship between the Earth, Moon, and Sun. Which is comforting. 

And rather boring.

Where were you for the Solar Eclipse?