indigo eye

We drove along the Lost River.  The sunlight on the small out buildings played on my soul … a sweet, treasured location and yet so isolated.   We entered St. Johnsbury, exploring several back ways, old factories, possibly unused along with the dusty, useful by lanes behind the active shops.  We found our friends in good time and walked along the river to meet them.  We stood in line for lunch and as the line descended into a basement area, we were surrounded by a blackness like pitch soaked wool, pressed up into our eye sockets and nostrils, commanding us to stop.  That was the moment when the light felt most like oxygen. our breath itself whisked away suddenly.  And then, after lunch, the sun and the wind both greeted us at the sidewalk, playing host to the strange joy of the day … a sharpness, a warmth.  And everywhere the genial spirit of the city, its booths, its attendants, its hosts beckoned.  We had time to play, to notice, to receive.  We enjoyed the intimate spirals of the stairs in the library and the opulence of a Bierstadt painting of Yosemite valley.  It called to us from far across the room in the Athaneum.  We united with our friends eventually, unfolding our chairs in an elevated spot with a good view of the valley and a large sand pile where children perched and played.  

The eclipse began to gather force before it was visible in any way.  One friend noted the sunlight receding, whisking its warmth back and away from us.  A man with a reflector telescope invited us over to see the moon’s silent march on the sun’s disk.  Later, during totality, he would again let us marvel at the flares on the sun’s orb.  With an hour to note and prepare we sat comfortably, patiently… visited a bit.  As the hour wore on, the sunlight began to visibly withdraw.  Everything was still bright and yet finely etched, each beard hair on my friend’s face distinct in that introspective light.

Now it was time to look at our watches and count down the last couple of minutes.  Street lights in the valley began to brighten up.  We were surely in twilight, although not totality.  And then the shadow arrived.  With a gentle whoosh the southern horizon of the eclipse band became noticeable in a single moment.  It swept upward.  It showed suddenly, quietly, urgently … stage lights uplighting the rest of the scene.  It was a distant sunny land beckoning us from its normal.  This illumination, unexpected, was so sudden!  It overcame that gradual sense of diminishment that had characterized the previous hour.  It WAS the moment of totality.

The crowd cheered and yet honored the hush of the moment.  It was dark but not black.  We could breathe, we could see.  We were not in pitch darkness.  And at the same time we could look directly at the sun and marvel at the corona of the sun’s face.   We could see the jewels of light that slipped past the uneven surface of the moon, the great diamond of light at seven o clock especially.

That shadow and its hush lifted away in minutes.  We were ready to slip open the car doors, tuck our chairs away and start the engine.  And we were soon in the vanguard of the traffic.  Friends who had gone to Burlington VT, a full four hours away (compared to our two and a half), would arrive home in the wee hours of the morning.  We encountered a clogged artery leaving St. Johnsbury and took a mapped detour that gave us back at least an hour, twice.  By the time we had bypassed the Notch area we were ahead of the traffic and enjoyed a peaceful ride home, arriving at sunset.

The power of sunlight, the interplay of light and dark, especially in the mind, where it functions like oxygen to perceiving, to thinking and feeling.  We felt the companionship of all people, their focus on the light (of life), or the life (of light).  These are the lasting impressions of this brief but remarkable set of moments on a warm April, one of the first to finally emerge from the dreary basket of raw days that had preceded.  A feeling of blessing and wonder.

Jonathan