Maybe you heard there was an astronomical event here in the US this month. Apparently these things come around quite frequently, at least two per year according to the Google Net, but never more than five for some strange reason. I’ve been on this planet more than fifty years now, and this was the first (and quite possibly the last) I’ve seen. The last total solar eclipse came through Ohio back in 1806. The next one won’t visit the Buckeye State again until 2099. As much as I want to think advances in medical and science technologies will allow me to see that day, I’m not sure I want to. That’s a lot of years still ahead. With the way things are going, Ohio might not even exist then.
I took the day off work and we let Camden stay home from school to mark the occasion, which happened on Monday April 8. If you know anything about Ohio, you know the weather here can be sketchy. We’re talking about a state where all four seasons typically happen in a forty-eight hour period. You can go to bed with seventy degrees outside and wake up with snow on the ground. The forecast was calling for clouds all day, so we were skeptical. That’s par for the course in Ohio though. A once-in-a-lifetime event, and you learn to live with the fact that you may not get to enjoy it. Maybe that’s why so many people in this state are grumpy.
We watched the moon begin crossing the sun around 2:30. The sky was perfectly clear, thankfully, and we had a great view the whole time. The sky slowly grew darker, and we watched to see what would happen. I had heard people talk about full eclipses in other places. The sky gets as dark as nighttime. Animals get confused. The moon turns to blood, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria! I thought maybe those people were full of bologna and just looking for attention. Alien abduction survivors returning to Earth after being probed, eager to share their stories.
They were right though.
As the moment of occlusion approached, things got downright eerie. Evening crickets began chirping. The tiny peeper frogs began peeping. The owls on our property began hooting. Animals were getting confused, and the sky was getting dark. And then — BAM! — total eclipse. I took off my glasses and just stared. It was all I could do. I told my family to take off their glasses too, but they didn’t want to. “You’ll burn out your eyes!” they told me. But I finally convinced them it was perfectly safe. The optometrist says our full eyesight should return again in a couple weeks.
The only way I can describe it is that nothing looked right. It was like standing on an alien planet. Three o’clock in the afternoon, and it was as dark as sunset. The sky was a weird color, and there was this giant black light glowing in the sky overhead. For us, it lasted about three minutes, which was both very quick and also seemed to last a lifetime at the same time. I kept thinking to myself, ‘I want to look at this forever, but it’s also kind of creeping me out, and I’m ready to have my normal life back again.’
I hope you had a chance to see it. If not, the next full solar eclipse in the US will be August 23, 2044, and will be visible in only three states: Montana, North Dakota and South Dakota. Outside of the US, the next eclipse will be August 12, 2026, and will be visible in Greenland, Iceland and Spain.
Below are some pictures that we took. Have you ever seen a total solar eclipse? Tell me your experience in the comments.
Idk about you but I’ll be wearing corrective lenses for the rest of my life 😂
I felt like Smeagol all night, talking to myself, back and forth.
“We burned our eyeses out! We’ll go blind!”
“No. No we didn’t, Precious. It’s all safe. You’ll see.”
Aw man, ours only lasted for 1 minute!
I’m so glad the weather cleared up for the eclipse and that you got to experience totality. It was fun reading about your experience!