Against all odds for this time of the year in Maine, the long awaited full solar-eclipse day delivered ideal weather. Amazingly, especially for April, after a week of gray, rain, and snow, the sky stretched cloudless, the air was crisp, and temperatures edged into the 50s. It felt too good to be true. If I had been a betting man, this was a wager thing I would have lost.
You've no doubt heard about the swarm of curiosity seekers who mobbed the narrow band of total eclipse as it moved up from Texas and through the Midwest and eventually through northern New England. I won't rehash that part of the story. For us, the question came down to finding a place to observe the astronomical event without the carnival congestion and related distractions.
Houlton, 115 miles to the north of us, touted itself as the ultimate destination and publicized accordingly. After a snow-scant winter, they needed to recover from severe winter tourism losses. We wished them well but thought other locales, perhaps Millinocket, might be saner, even though more distant.
Houlton is normally a two-hour, 18-minute drive to the north of us. Narrow, forested, two-lane U.S. 1 the only route for most of the way. For others, it's at the upper end of Interstate 95, just before Canada. It's not only the seat of potato-famed Aroostook County, it's also the principal access point. We had to wonder how widely some of the metropolitan traffic would spill over into Washington County, perhaps once GPS started rerouting traffic to alternate highways. It wouldn't take much to jam up everything for us and everyone else.
In planning for our adventure, we scoured the maps and settled on Danforth, population 587 spread over 60.46 square miles (6.46 of that being water) at the northern edge of our county, just before Aroostook. Danforth was on the way to Houlton anyway and would receive just about the same timespan of total eclipse. How heavenly, if we could stay out of the mud and muck. We focused on a side road north from the village at the center of town and hoped the route was paved. No guarantees from the map or satellite photos. If not, considering impassable conditions this time of year, we'd need to have plans B, C, and D at hand. We zeroed in on two cemeteries as possible places to set up our folding chairs, and headed off, leaving ourselves a generous margin of time for delays and readjustment.
Too good to be true, we instead had smooth sailing all the way, scouted out our sites and some gorgeous scenery, even noted the possibility of crashing Mike & Kay's Eclipse Party that a homemade roadside sign presented. But where was everybody? Had we deluded ourselves? What had we overlooked? The scenery, though, was gorgeous.
We decided to head back to the village and stopped at the only restaurant in town, one with fuel service and a single rest room, which had a long line. No surprise. We were, though, surprised by the number of friends and neighbors from Eastport we ran into. Oh, yes, the food was better than most you'd find in a diner and the service was prompt and friendly, despite the throng at the front of the store. I'd stop there again, definitely.
I did have to laugh at the pristine black tee-shirt one woman wore. It featured photos of the cycle of a solar eclipse and the time 4:36. Where we were, totality was set to begin at 3:32. Was I the only one aware that she was running on Atlantic Daylight Savings to the east in Canada?
Beyond that, here's what we found:
When we returned to the cemetery, which had been No. 2 on our list until we discovered that No. 1 was tiny, wet, and too heavily wooded, we were jolted to see we had unexpected company. A party of three was firmly ensconced. Were they locals? Would they resent our intrusion? Nah, they were from just a few towns down the road from us in Eastport, and their planning paralleled ours. As kindred spirits, they became the perfect associates for our experience, the kind who swapped food with us and had prepared accordingly. Their holiday greetings had even gone out with 200 pairs of eclipse glasses and best wishes for looking ahead in 2024. Yeah, they were a plus.
Maybe this was true, after all.
It may be spring, but there were still patches of fresh snow on the ground, some with large tracks I've since identified as wolves. Seems that in this stretch of Maine, wolves range in from neighboring Canada. I was almost disappointed they weren't bear.
Also almost too good to be true was those flimsy little fold-up solar eclipse glasses, which completely blocked any light except the sun's. These weren't Cracker Jack prizes but rather surprisingly effective. My previous full eclipse, the late '70s in the desert of Washington state, lacked that advance. This was a leap ahead of the smoked glass that made the rounds back then. This time we watched the progression as the overlay of the moon slowly created a crescent sun, eventually resembling the familiar waning or new moon. Well, this was a kind of turnabout as fair play, right?
As we estimated the amount of the sun's face that was being covered, we were impressed by how much illumination still surrounded us. Even at 90 percent coverage, we could have been convinced this was only a hazy day. Back in the '90s, I had been in the woods during a partial eclipse and been disconcerted by the eerie monochrome that fell upon us. It wasn't precisely twilight but a kind of graying, almost like a dry fog. That's what now happened, around 98 percent coverage, accompanied by the appearance of a flock of confused grackles and a gush of cold air from the direction of the sun rather than the stiff breezes that had been at our backs.
And then the incredible began in a rapid sequence. We could remove our protective film lenses and look at the sun, which was not yet a ring of fire but instead a spotlight of pure white rather than its usual yellows. It was unearthly, eternal, perhaps suggestive of the light proclaimed in the Tibetan Book of the Dead or the words of creation in Genesis and the gospel of John. This platinum brilliance hung over us, out of time and then gone, replaced by the anticipated disc accompanied by Venus and Jupiter.
Trying to photograph the distant ring of the sun's surface with a cell phone was elusive. Instead, enough light still poured forth to fill in most of the orb, leaving only that dark pinhole. We gazed on a small bead just to the left of the bottom of the orb, a spot where the sun would begin to emerge as if being reborn. Somehow, we overlooked the small memorial lamp at a headstone in the cemetery where we where.
And then, once more, that pure white spotlight blasted toward us in utter, aloof majesty, and the regression toward some normality began.
The camera sees in its own way. Somehow, the rainbow is fitting. And the moon still covered most of the sun, despite what you observe here.
Shadows, by the way, are sharpened.
Yes, it was almost too good to be true.
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