Did anyone else get the opportunity to watch the eclipse last week? The boyfriend and I headed up to Keizer, OR and camped out for the weekend in Keizer Rapids Park in order to watch the eclipse in totality and we’re finally starting to feel like we’re back in the groove of our regular schedules. Neither of us had ever seen a total solar eclipse before and this was the first eclipse to travel coast-to-coast across the US since 1918, so we just wanted to sit back and experience it instead of being distracted trying to take the perfect photo. It was humbling to watch and to share the moment with the millions of other Americans who were watching at the same time. If you missed totality this time, there’s another eclipse coming up in 2024 whose path of totality will start in Mexico, come up to Texas and through Maine, then cross over Canada.
Just because we were roughing it didn’t mean we had to sacrifice and make poor food decisions. Armed with a bag of our trusty nutty meat and a handful of produce from our garden, we were able to make some pretty healthy burritos (breakfast and regular!) while we were there. When we’re camping, we have to keep things a little simpler but we still like to cook everything from scratch like we normally do.
On the morning of the eclipse, the anticipation was tangible. Our fellow campers woke up early and began setting up their cameras, telescopes, and lawn chairs. After cleaning up from breakfast, we checked and double-checked our glasses and cracked a bottle of wine in preparation. Then we waited. My eclipse app told us that first contact where the moon first starts to cover the sun was happening. The crowd cheered and the boyfriend and I clinked our plastic cups of wine together.
At first, I couldn’t see anything obscuring the sun. Through my eclipse glasses, the sun just looked like a complete orange circle. Our camp neighbor said she could see it starting in the upper right part of the sun, and then we could all see it. The sun started to look like a cookie that someone had taken a perfectly round bite out of. We began playing with shadows, first making a makeshift pinhole projector out of two paper plates, then borrowing someone’s colander to project little crescents over the ground.
I made a criss-cross pattern with my fingers and in the shadow it looked like I had extremely knobbly knuckles. A middle-aged man in a tie-dye shirt with long, ragged curls who looked like he had been on one too many trips sneaked up behind us to marvel at the shadow of my hands as well. I can still hear his gleeful giggle ringing out across the campground.
Around 50% coverage, we began noticing a slight drop in temperature. The sky began to darken and we watched the birds circle in the sky and roost. At about 80%, I had to pull a sweatshirt over the t-shirt and shorts that had been appropriate attire only moments ago.
And now, totality was upon us. We took off our glasses and the moon was a black circle surrounded by the sun’s silvery corona. The sky was dark and we could see Venus shining brightly among the visible stars. Spinning, it looked like a sunset all around us. Then I felt a tap on my shoulder, and there was my boyfriend leaning on one knee with his grandmother’s ring. In one instance, the boyfriend became the fiancé – my fellow adventurer for life. For most people, the totality of the eclipse lasted two minutes, but my fiancé was able to make this moment last a lifetime.
