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Apr 88 min read

The Eclipse!



Monday, April 8, 2024


The eclipse was great, fantastically entertaining. So what?


Now that you’ve heard about it, learned some interesting facts, and perhaps seen and experienced it, so what? What does it mean? Does it mean anything to you?

 

I enjoyed it. But, it is just one thing, a unique and great thing, yes, but it’s just one more thing about Nature, about the Earth, the Solar System, you, me, and every other living being and entity in this mystical and beautiful Universe. There is an infinitely large number of other phenomena taking place daily that are just as amazing, maybe more so. If we pay attention to these phenomena, experience them, we can become more aware of our place in our environment, and we can use that knowledge gained from our experiences in constructive ways.

 

That said, I went to see the eclipse in Vienna, Illinois, which was on the path of totality. I would be able to experience totality for about four minutes. Vienna City Park was celebrating the eclipse all weekend. They had events on Saturday and Sunday, as well as Monday, the day of the eclipse. They had music, food trucks, and a 5K/10K running race. There were a lot of people with their dogs. There was a food truck that had their pet, four-week-old goat with them. It was so cute! There were plenty of bicyclists here to ride the Tunnel Hill Rail Trail. It is the official State Bike Trail, similar in stature to a state park. This was all advertised on Facebook. “Bring the family, come have fun in Vienna!”

 

I think much of the motivation for the event was on the commerce side of things, encouraging people to come to town, it’s good for business. At the same time, there was certainly ample intent and opportunity for other good things to take place. Having fun. Meeting new people. Seeing baby goats. Sharing time together in meaningful ways.

 

While this is all true, I wish there was some educational aspect showing a connection between the eclipse and nature, the environment, and science that had been stressed, where some space in in City Park had been utilized as a kind of science module for all ages, explaining what was happening.

 

The Earth, the Moon, and the Sun.



These speeds boggle the mind. As fast as all these objects are moving, their motion is such that the positions of the Sun, Moon, and Earth come into a state where the Moon sits between the Sun and Earth in a straight line, virtually blocking the Sun from our view for a brief period. As if time stops. Scientists have determined the exact paths of these bodies, so the timing is reliably known.



Before modern times, understanding of the causes of an eclipse was less well known. Still, it is believed that several ancient cultures, without the modern equipment and the mathematics we have today, determined a great deal of information about the timing and occurrence of eclipses. Leo Deluca, writing in Scientific American, says “Humans have been calculating the recurrence of solar eclipses for thousands of years.” According to Athony Aveni, at Colgate University, ancient cultures used something called the “six-five beat” to predict eclipses. Researchers have also found evidence of eclipses in the placement of rock cairns, as well as drawings on them in the time period 4000-3000 B.C. E. There have been sketches on bones in China, that are believed to be evidence of eclipses around 1400 to 1200 B.C.E.

 

Scientific American: How Ancient Humans Studied—And Predicted—Solar Eclipses: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-ancient-humans-studied-and-predicted-solar-eclipses/

 

Outside of the realm of science, as we know it today, there were many explanations of the significance of an eclipse.

 

Another article in Scientific American, by Dennis Zotigh, provides perspectives on eclipses from several Native American cultures.

 

 

A 2017 article, authored with contributions from several faculty members at Colorado State University, details explanations about eclipses from ancient Egyptian, Greek, Japanese, Hindu, and Baltic Cultures.

 

 

A recent article in Quanta magazine discusses the overlap and changes in how humans have understood an eclipse over thousands of years.

 

 

Back to my eclipse experience …

 

When I left for Vienna, I had second thoughts about going, as it was cloudy at the campground ,and the weather forecast at Vienna said it was foggy. It took about 75 minutes to drive there. When I arrived around 9:45, it was still cloudy. There was a small crowd, and the running race was to begin at 10:00. The race was an out and back format on the Tunnel Hill Rail Trail, which I had intended to ride, so I pushed my plans to do that back about an hour. I walked around and mingled with people, then I had some tea on my van. By 11:30, somewhat miraculously, the sky had cleared almost completely. The Sun was shining bright. I started riding.

 

I learned that the Rail Trail had a gravel surface. I had planned to ride up the trail for many miles, find a nice place to be when Totality took place, enjoy it in the woods, then ride back. I would stop along the way and check out progress once the eclipse began around 12:45PM. I hoped this was still doable on the gravel surface. It was! The surface was hard packed gravel through wooded areas with an occasional farm adjacent, green fields resting nicely and looking great. The trail crossed a road a few times, went through a 500-foot tunnel, which was dark inside, but I had my bike light with me. It also crossed a river several times on wooden bridges that once carried trains. Some of these crossings were high up over a gorge that had been carved out by the river. There was one little “settlement.” Sandburn Junction was represented by one store, that was it, one building, accessed by bike or by car on a dirt road. There was also a farm – with barns, a large pond, and fields - across the street from the store. It was cute and unique.

 

When I reached around eleven miles, the road surface changed from hard packed to having some sections with loose gravel that seemed to have been put down recently. It was ridable, but it was very bumpy and slow going. I continued to about mile 13, where I decided to turn around and find a place to sit and experience Totality. There had been a few places I passed where there were wood park benches. I rode back about five miles towards City Park, and I found a nice bench. It was about 1:30 and Totality was supposed to be approximately 1:50-2:03 PM. It was a nice quiet spot, surround by trees on one side, with tress and a green pasture on the other side. Quiet, picturesque and beautiful. I sat meditatively anticipating Totality.

 

Around 1:45, a couple came riding down the trail and passed me going north. About twenty yards past, they stopped, and the man said, “This looks like a good spot.” I would have company it appeared. They walked back to me, passed me, and continued about ten yards south. They parked their bikes and took out cameras and tripods. They talked continually, and their camera setup had some app that was talking to them about camera stuff. They also seemed to be anxious and tense, worried about getting things set and taking the right photos. They even argued some about it. My quiet environment had left the scene. To some degree, it changed my experience. But they did settle down some at 12:59 when things went darkish.

 

Totality was worth seeing and experiencing. Nothing could mimic it in terms of seeing photos or hearing other person’s descriptions. Had to be there. In October last year, I was in Page, Arizona for the Annular Eclipse, and it was neat, but it was nothing like today’s phenomenon. The Annular was interesting in that one can follow the path of the Moon as it begins to cross in front of the Sun, but due to reasons involving the Moon’s distance from the Earth, the Moon’s apparent size at the time was not large enough to completely cover the Sun. Even at its most precise moment, there was a ring of sunlight around the Moon. Where I was watching, it did become darker and cooler, but not like happened today.

 

I have to say, it was quietly astounding. It felt mysterious, eerie, special. The lack of light, the darkness, was of a different nature than the gradual change of light at dawn or dusk, where the Sun had not yet risen or set. It’s a different dark. The shadows are different. The coolness that set in felt different. It seemed to happen so quick, the drop in temperature as sunlight ceased shining on my skin. I looked up at the moon a few times, just for a few seconds, without the eclipse glasses at this point, as I had read from several sources it was safe to do this. It was amazing to see the corona of the Sun and the Moon as a silhouette sitting in that corona. Photos of it will have a different feel for me now, having seen it and experienced it.

 

Then it was done, 2:03, and the darkness began to fade. I was on my bike again shortly after that. The shadows of tree branches on the trail were a little weird, seemed to play a little with balancing the bike, and it took about ten minutes to warm up again.

 

I rode back to the park. It was a good ride. It was so worth doing …

 

Ok, as great as it was, there are other amazing things in Nature, like all the trees and wildlife in the forest, the colors, the scents, the fact that there are so many living organisms living in harmony. And there’s also … um … you! When I comment that every living being is remarkable, that includes you!

 

The human body’s systems, such as circulation, nervous, digestive, etc. are so complex and amazing. Note that all living things have analogous systems, and though levels of complexity vary, all are amazing …

 

For example, blood flow: Your blood flows throughout your body continuously to deliver nutrients and collect waste to be removed in the form of solid, liquid, or gaseous particles. This blood flow and all that it accomplishes is amazing, absolutely, astoundingly, amazing. The body has 60,000 miles of blood vessels. This is long enough to circle the globe more than twice. 

 

The speed with which blood flows varies according to where it is flowing. There are several factors that have an effect on blood flow, including the diameter of the blood vessel, one’s blood pressure, resistance to flow within the vessel. In general, the larger the passage-way, the faster the speed, up to about one foot per second. Through the aorta it moves fast, while in tiny capillaries, which are so narrow that they only allow one cell to pass a given point at a time, it moves slowly. This is so exchange of nutrients can take place. Every cell has to be able to pass oxygen in and carbon dioxide out of the cell-blood border, to be carried back to the lungs for another exchange there. It’s amazing!


 

Remember, the eclipse was a wonderful and interesting novelty in Nature. There will not be another one in the Lower 48 until 2044! But there are so many other Natural wonders, countless, that are not novel to us, and maybe we take them for granted. The bark of a tree (or a dog ...) The song of a bird. The color and texture of a rock. The awe of a landscape. A campfire. The sound of water flowing peacefully. The smile of a person …




 

 


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