May 2024
By Bob Muggleston
On April 8, at roughly 3:30 in the afternoon, Mother Nature put on a show in Northern New England that onlookers won’t soon forget. Photo by Bob Muggleston
Here in Connecticut the daffodils are blooming and the peepers are in full throat. Can it finally be spring? Mother Nature has been reluctant to show her cards. Two late-season snowstorms in ski country had me running back to Vermont, while here in Southern New England we endured a string of cold, wind-driven storms with flooding rains. But today, finally, spring-like weather. A cloud of gnats followed me around as I worked at boatyards removing canvas winter covers. The air hummed with the sound of powertools and delivered the occasional waft of bottom paint. Will we be boating soon? As the Magic 8 Ball my sister and I had as kids might say, “It is decidedly so.”
In these modern times, when so much is predictable in ways that can feel spiritually draining, Mother Nature is, as always, reliably unpredictable. And even the predictable stuff can be pretty spectacular. I’m speaking, of course, of the recent solar eclipse. Did you put yourself in the path of totality? I did. To make that happen, I took my kids (my wife was on vacation in North Carolina) up to the ski club I’m part of in Waitsfield, Vermont, where there was two feet of recent snow, and it was warm enough to ski in T-shirts as we counted down the minutes to the big event. I know the kids were leery of all the hype the eclipse was receiving, and deservedly so, but I was confident it would be something they’d never forget. And it was.
The lodge at Mad River Glen was the place from which we chose to see the eclipse. It was definitely a party-like atmosphere, with many folks drinking beer on the deck and whiling away the time by listening to a Grateful Dead cover band. Amid a few clouds, a thin, circular rainbow formed around the sun. This was the amuse-bouche. Shortly before 3 p.m. my kids, wearing their Amazon-purchased eclipse glasses, told me it was already possible to see the moon crossing in front of the sun. Soon the light around us began to feel thin, and the temperature dropped. It was really happening!
One of the biggest takeaway lessons for me during the event was just how powerful the sun is. With your viewing glasses you could see that the sun was 50% obscured, and then 60%, and so forth, until really just a tiny slice remained. And all the while, when you removed your glasses and snuck a peek with your unprotected eyes, the sun was still the sun in its round-orb glory . . . albeit a bit smaller. Which means ancient civilizations probably witnessed partial eclipses and never knew why the light around them dimmed a bit, or the temperature suddenly dropped.
As the moon began to fully obscure the sun the crowd around us began to cheer and clap. It was exciting in a way that’s hard to explain. Yes, you can hear the scientific explanation for why it happens, and look up photos of full eclipses online, but to actually see one in person is quite another thing. It’s like looking at a photo of the Grand Canyon, and then actually driving there in person and standing on the North Rim. One makes you say, “Wow, that’s pretty cool,” and the other makes you feel things you’ve never experienced before or will ever forget.
At the moment of totality a shriek arose from the crowd, and the sun became a black disc amid a thin, glowing circle of light. Blobs of energy – not solar flares as some news outlets reported, but plasma structures – erupted from a side of the ring. It felt 10 degrees colder than it had been, and people’s cell phones lit up in the darkness. What an amazing thing to happen on an April afternoon! And how lucky we are as humans to know when this is going to happen, and to be able to put ourselves in box seats.
It’s always great to feel connected to the natural world; to understand our place in the order of things. For many of us, boating provides that connection (albeit on a much smaller scale) and keeps us grounded. Now that the excitement of the big show is over, I’ll get back to working on my boat. Because for me, the sailing season can’t come soon enough.
