MILLINOCKET, Maine – We saw the eclipse coming from a long way off. Thanks to detailed astronomical observations and mathematics I will never understand, we learned years ago that the northern half of our state of Maine would be in the singular “path of totality.” Nearly a year ago, my wife and I booked a rustic rental in our favorite small town in the heart of that path: Millinocket, a gritty but spunky former mill town on the cusp of the wilderness of the north Maine woods.
The day before the eclipse, we piled into the car with our kids and dogs and drove the two-and-a-half hours to our Airbnb, a quaint old home a few blocks from downtown Millinocket. Walking the main avenue 24 hours ahead of the big show, there was little traffic and few signs of the excitement to come. Shops and restaurants that would typically be closed on a Sunday evening were lingering open, but people were scarce. The 2020 census population count was 4,114. Perhaps, I thought, the massive influx of tourists the media had been projecting was not going to materialize.
The first sign that I was wrong came around six the next morning. Walking our dogs, I spotted multiple cars with out-of-state plates and bleary-eyed drivers, clutching coffee mugs and slowly circulating through the quiet small town streets. Over the next few hours, they arrived steadily, paying enterprising locals $20 to park in makeshift parking lots (plus $5 for eclipse glasses if needed!). There was not a cloud in the sky, and following a chilly early spring, the temperature began climbing to an unseasonable 16 degrees Celsius (60 degrees F.). Something was in the air.
We made our way into town around lunchtime and set up our chairs on an open patch of grass in Veterans Memorial Park. The town had organized music, food trucks, local vendors, and even a whoopie pie-tasting contest (worth Googling if you’re unfamiliar). The atmosphere was one of festive anticipation. Apart from some seasoned professional eclipse-watchers with enormous telescopes and camera lenses as long as your arm, it was clear most of the hundreds of attendees – ourselves included – weren’t entirely sure what we were in for.
Watching the Moon bite the Sun
The eclipse started slowly… and then it happened fast. Donning our glasses, hundreds of strangers gazed skyward together and watched the moon gradually take a bite out of the sun. It was a small bite at first, then a bigger one reminiscent of PAC-MAN. Soon, nearly the entire sun was covered, and we all watched as the last sliver of sunlight shrunk and finally disappeared behind the dark lunar disc. From behind our heavily tinted lenses, the show seemed to be over. Then we took off our glasses.
It is hard to describe the shock I felt when casually looking back up, I found myself staring into a gaping, flaming sky hole on a cold night in the middle of a warm afternoon. There was a collective gasp from the crowd – confirmation that no eclipse photographs or videos, no written or verbal descriptions, and no scientific understanding of how it all works could prepare us for the experience itself. The stars were out and the air was cold. We were there together, breathless in our smallness and our awe.
I couldn’t help but consider what it must have been like for humans in other eras, perhaps working in a field traveling across a desert, or fighting in a war, to experience a total eclipse. It must have felt like glimpsing the divine, a confusing and even terrifying sign of how little in this universe we actually control. I hope it was also heartening to some, as it was to me – a reminder of the utter unlikelihood that we might witness this remarkable alignment of celestial bodies.
Whatever our conflicts and our struggles, how fortunate are we? How blessed? And now that the sun has returned, how will we carry that understanding with us into the world?
The writer lives with his family in Bowdoinham, Maine.•