April 8, 2024
Written By: J.Couch
Solar Eclipse Day has arrived! But it’s cloudy, really? We have come all this way and we wake up to a cloudy gray looking Texas day. Was this a bust and a waste of our time? I guess we will see. We got up and had breakfast, ran a few errands. We found that we were missing a pair of solar glasses so we needed to find a pair that would not break the bank. We ran into town and found a guy who wasn’t gouging too bad. The weather was starting to break up a bit and we could see some blue sky peeking out between the clouds. It may just work out after all. We had our glasses and chairs to watch the celestial show that mother nature was presenting today. We had originally planned on driving out to Sulphur Springs which is about an hour east of Dallas and right in the middle of the path of the shadow. We found out that Anna was also in the path and would still be 100% totality. Why drive an hour and fight traffic and possibly sit in completely stopped traffic on the freeway and side roads when we could just sit in the driveway and watch it from there, and with the comfort of our own bathroom?
We decided this was a great idea, we set up the chairs, got our snacks and drinks and waited for it to start. About 12:30 pm the moon started coming across the lower left side. It had started, but very, very slowly. Almost like watching paint dry. For a bit I looked at the lawn and watched the grass grow too. I think that was happening a little faster than the moon. The moon inched its way across the face of the sun causing the temperature to drop and everything to take on an evening low light glow. Someone had mentioned to wear green or red, which we did have red chairs but did I remember at the time to focus on the colors? Nope. Well maybe we can do that on the next solar eclipse in 20 or 30 years. The moon kept moving across and we could hear it changing the wildlife around us. The birds started chirping more, the roosters were making a lot of noise like they thought it might be morning again for them, it was confusing them. I bet they were thinking, didn’t we just do this a few hours ago? The dogs in the neighborhood started barking as well. Kind of an odd experience to hear all this as the light and temperature was dropping. There was a slight breeze that picked up and the clouds were starting to clear up as well. The clouds were helping me a little with trying to get pictures with my cellphone camera since it was having a hard time focusing with a solar glass taped to the face of it. Not the best set up but kind of worked. Made me wish I had a nice SLR camera with a solar filter and a tripod. Maybe add that to my list of things for next time along with looking at the red and green chairs.
The moon had moved almost all the way across the face of the sun now, it was amazing how much light was still coming from the small sliver of sun that was showing. It was down to a thumbnail of sun, just like when you see the moon in the night sky as just a thumbnail. The street lights were starting to come on, people’s automatic lights on their homes started coming on too. While watching the grass grow, I noticed that the solar lawn lights started coming on too. Reality seemed to be out of whack. It was an odd feeling. We still could not look at the sun without the glasses. It was also amazing that at this point I had not burned my retina and had made it safely this far. I wondered how many others today were not as lucky as me. I am sure I will hear about it on the news. It was 1:42, like clockwork. The last little bit of moon had finally moved across the full face of the sun, the light disappeared and it went from low light to very dark quickly. This is when the magic happened. It became a black disc with a glowing ring around the radius and an amazing glow of light coming out from behind it. You could see what looked like a solar flare coming off the bottom right side of the sun. This was the most heavenly, majestic thing that I have ever witnessed in my life. It made me feel so small in this vast universe that we live in. I was realizing that I have absolutely no control over this world or universe in any way. Only my own little world around me, if at that. It’s hard to even put this into words how I felt at this very moment. It was amazing and emotional all at the same time. I was almost speechless, it’s hard to even comprehend what you are looking at. The stars behind the sun had started to come out and to the upper right of the black glowing disc you could see a bright star, I found out later from my sister that this was Saturn. I realized at this point that I have never seen these stars before because the sun’s light blocks them out during the day. It felt at this point like I was looking at a screen or had VR glasses on and I was watching a movie. It didn’t even seem real.
To the right side of the black disc the sun started to peek out again. This caused the diamond ring effect that you hear people talk about. It truly does look like a diamond ring glowing brightly. I quickly found my glasses again so that I didn’t have to see the eye doctor later today. It lightened up quickly, things started to go back to what I think of as normal reality. It seemed like this part moved a lot quicker than the beginning that seemed to take forever. This two and a half minutes of totality seemed to be a mere blink of the eye. I am not sure if it really was 2 and a half minutes or maybe I was in some kind of time warp that teleported me to the end of the eclipse. The light came back quickly, the birds and dogs calmed down and went back to their normal daily routines. The street, house and lawn lights all started to shut off. Life was returning to normal. I knew this event was coming, I had a pretty good idea of what to expect. It made me wonder what people thousands of years ago thought was happening during a solar eclipse. That had to be the most terrifying thing in their lives. Think of the people that they tried to explain this to that didn’t see it. They probably thought they were crazy. We watch more as the moon, just as slowly as before moved, across the rest of the sun. The warm temperatures started to come back, the wind died down. Life was returning to normal. We picked up our chairs and things and headed back into the house trying to wrap our minds around what we had just witnessed. I can see why people will spend thousands of dollars and travel thousands of miles around the world to experience this event. I may consider that in the future as well. It’s a moving experience and worth every second of the 2 and a half minutes, more or less, of totality. If you ever have a chance to experience this, you have to take that opportunity. Don’t pass it up. It might change your life. If you were in the path of this event, I would really love to hear your comments of what you felt too.
Thanks for wandering with us,
The Wandering Couchs
