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| The diamond ring and no, that's not my photo but it's exactly what we saw. |
I drove about 70 miles north yesterday to view the total eclipse under cloudless blue skies in Newport, Vt., and kept notes about the day to share with Mrs. BGA who, unfortunately, was away and missed the event.
Although I was looking forward to it, I will admit I went north thinking the eclipse might have been a little overhyped.
I was wrong.
It everything it was promoted to be and so very much more. Awe inspiring doesn't do it justice.
Anyway, here is a quick transcription of my thoughts and contemporaneous notes jotted down in a reporter's notebook during the day. Apologies for the inconsistent punctuation, capitalization and tense which I will clean up in time, but hopefully this will give you an idea of what it was like. I'm very glad the sky was clear and I had the chance to experience totality. I've seen partial eclipses before, but this was something way, way more impressive.
Background:
Eclipse starts: 2:16:35 p.m.
Totality begins: 3:29:23
Totality lasts: 3 minutes, 35 seconds
Eclipes ends: 4:38:13 p.m.
HOW IT WENT
As I came up the ramp onto I-91 for the trip north just before 9 a.m. I said to myself, “Whoa.” At that time of day, on that part of the highway, I can often go a couple of miles before I see the first car. This time I actually had to wait at the top of the ramp for a bit to carefully merge into traffic. Five minutes up the road a rest area that almost never has more than two or three cars in its lot had every spot taken and a line of a dozen or more cars queued up on the shoulder waiting to find a place to park. Whoa indeed.
By the time I got to Newport, about an hour up the road, I had seen cars from 16 states and the District of Columbia.
Although I arrived at the eclipse viewing area in Newport 5½ hours before “totality” all the parking lots around the 36-acre Prouty Beach campground overlooking Lake Memphremagog were filled. I ended up being the third car directed to park behind the local armory but by the time I had grabbed my chair, cooler and backpack every spot in the lot had been filled.
A 10-minute walk brought me to Prouty Beach where I set my chair up on a bluff overlooking the shimmering water of the lake, grabbed my reporter’s notebook and started jotting down a few observations as thousands of people arrived.
Here’s some of what I wrote:
More people than expected ... set chair to face in direction people with massive telescopes are facing ... they must know what they are doing ... food truck offering brisket, ribs, pulled pork just setting up ... smells good ... line is building quickly to the porta potties ... spot someone wearing a black T-shirt from a 2011 eclipse ... someone sitting near me: “There’s a comet. You might need binoculars to see it but planets will be visible.”
More tripods than I’ve ever seen in one place ... some have huge telescopes and cameras attached with owners fiddling with them ... you could probably buy a pretty fancy new car for how much some of those set-ups cost ... on the other end of the spectrum, a few people have cardboard boxes with pinholes to project the sun onto a light surface ... a fellow with a wooden “sun spotter” is explaining to the curious how the thing works ... woman to my right passing the time reading the local paper to a companion: “Have you ever heard of a baseball player named Bill “Spaceman” Lee? It says he was here.” (The former Red Sox pitcher long lived in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom.)
Time for a walk around the campground and more notes: People playing frisbee and tossing a football ... kids chasing a balloon ... feels a little like a football tailgate ... woman with a table selling “Eclipse Cider” ... back of her SUV is filled with cases of the stuff ... she tells me they made the labels just for this day ... woman at Newport Goodrich Memorial Library display offers free eclipse glasses for safe viewing but I already have mine ... official-looking table selling chips, granola bars (of course), coffee, tea and hot chocolate for $2 and water, soda and seltzer for $3 ... surprisingly reasonable.
Another eclipse T-shirt, this one memorializing 2017 in South Carolina. ... line to porta potties is now 110 yards long with people standing two and three abreast ... a man with a ‘60s era lawn chair is sitting in the line and inches the chair forward every couple of minutes ... he may have the right idea ... I hear there’s a rumor more porta potties could be on the way ... I’ll believe it when I see it and decide to limit my liquid intake ;-) ... I tell brisket people if they had brought their own jobsite johnny they could charge $5 a head ... they laugh and agree.
People sitting around a table playing a card game called Boss Monster ... beats me ... couple playing a portable Scrabble game ... jigsaw pieces inside an open cardboard box ... maybe an eclipse puzzle? ... more than a few people doing sudoku ... man next to me sound asleep reading Tomboy Bride by Harriet Backus ... might put me to sleep too ... at 12:08 a huge roar erupts as a truck carrying nine more porta potties arrives ... as workers unload them a woman near the front of the line formed for the new arrival shouts, not unkindly, “Hurry up” ... the crowd laughs but within minutes there are now two 100-yard plus lines for the bathroom ... I brought Cokes and seltzer cans but I’m leaving them in the cooler until the lines subside (which they never do).
TV network has Starlink satellite internet setup and fellow with an expensive haircut and sports jacket is clearly the “talent” ... locked wifi signal shows TV folks are Sky News from the UK ... Spot T-shirt reading Big Eclipse Energy ... chalk lettering on basketball court says “Inhale Positivity” ... at a distance two hammocks have been erected between trees ... kids are flying a kite ... ask a fellow in front of a green pop-up potty if there’s really a portable toilet inside ... he says no, it’s for keeping his telescope and equipment out of the sun ... he tells me someone came by and asked how much he could pay them to use his toilet ... overheard: “We were going to go to Texas but when we saw the forecast we changed our plans and came here” ... even better: “The sun has a million times the volume of the earth” and a high-school aged kid, sounding like a stoner responding, “That’s pretty big.”
At 2 p.m. the PA on a flatbed truck starts up and the mayor (?) says the hope is after this Newport will no longer be a “drive through but a drive to” town, emphasis on "to" ... another speaker says the last time they had a crowd like this was when the Vermont band Phish played nearby “but this is better. No mud” ... speaker from the Northeast Kingdom Astronomy Foundation tell us “What I’m going to do is shut up. Use your eyes and senses and look around ... it will change your life.” He tells us the the totality “is a naked eye event.” ... speaker is as good as his word, offering only a few more sentences at appropriate times ... at 2:16 he tells us “first contact” is just seconds away ... he tells us when totality arrives to look a things that are red and green and note the color changes and tells us there will be some light on the horizon.
At 2:16:35 the speaker says “We have first contact” and a cheer erupts ... after a glimpse of the sun I pull off the glasses for a look at the crowd and every head is adorned with protective shades and is looking skyward ... 20 minutes or so in the sun looks like Pac Man ... a man nearby holds his binoculars in front of him and casts an image of the sun on the ground ... when he tries to show it to his wife her shadow blocks the sun and he’s frustrated ... cirrus clouds are starting to rise in the west but the show will be over before they can interfere ... announcer talks about impending “second contact” and tells us there will be an “ambient temperature drop” ... he’s not kidding ... it’s getting cooler already ... woman nearby: “Last time it was Aug. 21 in the summer and I didn’t notice it getting colder. I do now.” ... 3 p.m., still a half hour from totality and someone says, “It’s so cool and we haven’t even got to the good part yet.”
At 3:10, with 20 minutes until totality, the TV folks try out their lights ... I’ll personally go over and pull out the plug if they do that at totality ... at 3:16 all that is left is a thin slice of sun ... now there are just 10 people in line for the porta potty ... there’s a really eerie look to the sky and ground ... at 3:20 I pull my jacket on ... nine minutes to totality and there’s no one at the porta potties ... speaker: “We’re four minutes from second contact. Notice the changes in ambient lighting.”
At 3:29:18 (as I note later) the speaker says: “5, 4, 3, 2, 1” and the sun is totally covered and the crowd applauds ... there’s absolutely no color, just white jutting out around the black moon ... it’s not pitch black out but it is very dark except the horizon ... woman nearby: “My heart is pounding.” Someone else: “I’ve been to these before and you could see a dozen of them and not see one this good.” ... a single, bright light appears at the bottom and someone shouts, “There’s the diamond ring” ... never head of that but it makes sense.
Totality lasts 3 minutes, 35 seconds ... and within two minutes of the end of totality the line at the porta potties is more than 100 yards long again ... the eclipse is doing in reverse what it was doing at the start and most people are packing up ... what they were were oohing and aahing over before is now ignored ... I alternate between watching the sun come back and people watching ... someone says, “In an airplane you can see it for 10 minutes.” ... sounds like someone who is making it up as he goes on ... announcer: “There’s a box for recycling the classes. They are going all over the world.” ... I keep mine as a souvenir.
I ask a man in front of me who is packing up his camera telescope where he’s from ... he says Corning, N.Y., about seven hours away ... he was going to go to Burlington but called an audible yesterday when cloud cover was predicted to be lighter in Newport ... closest room he could get was in Lake George, N.Y., 200 miles away ... he left at 4 a.m. to get here ... he last shot the 2011 eclipse in Wyoming ... said he had to choose between Nebraska and Wyoming and opted for the latter because it’s a better vacation spot ... sorry Nebraska. ... At 3:59 p.m. the loudspeaker is playing “Dancing in the Moonlight” ... it is probably playing similarly appropriate songs but I don’t recognize any of the others.
At 4:38:13 the eclipse is officially finished and a half dozen or so people applaud ... the echo of a freight train horn comes across the lake and it’s as if a game has ended ... I pack up and head to my car where I sit until 5:30 to let the traffic get out of town ... I expect clear sailing home but no such luck ... when I reach I-91 it is bumper-to-bumper southbound with a lone car on the northbound side only every five minutes or so ... a little down the road I spot a Go-Pro camera that has fallen off a car between the two lanes ... I’m about to open the door and get it to see if I can somehow track down the owner but then the traffic starts up again ... traffic doesn't often become standstill but it rarely gets above 10-12 mph except for teasing a minute or two of 30 or 40 mph only to drop back to single figures.
It is nearly 10 p.m. before I get home ... the NCAA championship game is in full swing ... the trip back down took 4½ hours and I'm worn out ... it was a long day but it was a fabulous day.
