Extra: Wonder in the Sky

April 8, 2024, 3:11 p.m.
Chagrin Falls Polo Field

We were bickering and running late for the eclipse. I only had seven years since the last one to prepare for this. It was a Monday. We were ensconced in the ordinary, the everyday, the sublunar. But the cosmos had other plans for us.

After a morning of roasting vegetables for soup and making a playlist for a lunch we are hosting this Saturday, I had just awakened from a power nap. Joe had been at work since 5:30 a.m. 

We both had other things on our minds and were tasked with eclipse-watching the way you wedge in clipping toenails or unloading the dishwasher among other quotidian activities. Had I been able to phone the eclipse reservationist to announce we would be fifteen minutes late, I would have. I was going through the motions, jaded and blasé. 

When we finally settled the dogs and went outside, it felt eerie—dark, other-worldly, like being immersed in a science fiction film. The plan was to be the only people at the Chagrin Falls Polo Field, the setting of a potent urban legend I had fallen for in my youth. We only encountered a single other vehicle en route.

Upon arrival, we discovered hundreds of others had the same idea. The place was packed. A sign announced special event parking. We stressed out as I struggled to park and had to relinquish the wheel to Joe to maneuver into a tricky spot. We were now very late.

The mood among the hundreds present was quiet and reverent. I have never known that kind of quiet at a mass gathering, even during religious ceremonies.

When we finally took our spot, the eclipse was underway. No more going through the motions, no more bickering or planetary cynicism. The cosmos had a way of putting us in our places. As I donned my safety glasses and—just in time—watched as totality arrived, I for once felt dwarfed, awe-struck, and at a loss for words.

The only words I know that approach capturing the experience of awe come from poetry. In “The Idea of Order at Key West,” the poet Wallace Stevens, who spent his earthbound days as an insurance salesman, posits the interplay of imagination, the spirit, and moonlight.

As night descended, tilting in the air,
Mastered the night and portioned out the sea,
Fixing emblazoned zones and fiery poles,
Arranging, deepening, enchanting night.

It's an imperfect comparison, but for Stevens, man-made poetry’s potency eclipses nature’s power. He was wrong.

This was not my first solar eclipse. I vaguely remember the one in 2017 and even the ones before that. I remember it getting dark. That’s about all.

This eclipse eclipsed those other eclipses. When totality passed, people stayed on—moved. Some played, some spoke—still in the hushed tones of the wonderstruck. The eclipse had also eclipsed personal, political, and religious differences. We were all in this—under the sun and moon—together.

Joe and I made a pact to be back at the Polo Field twenty years from now. As he put our safety glasses in a safe spot until then, I pondered the last two lines of “The Idea of Order at Key West”:

And of ourselves and of our origins,
In ghostlier demarcations, keener sounds.