For something you couldn’t actually “see” in the traditional sense of the word, Monday’s eclipse proved to be one of those brief events capable of galvanizing attention.
Like the countdown to the New Year, the afternoon eclipse received plenty of publicity and it even pulled people out of offices and homes to don funny glasses and convert cereal boxes into simple viewing devices.
People stared skyward, faces scrunched up and wondered at a celestial convergence that, for a few minutes, made the moon instead of the sun the sky’s dominant orb. If only briefly, the eclipse blotted out worries about societal discord, nuclear war and political meltdown. It gave people a good excuse to take a timeout from what they were doing and it offered an instant, albeit brief, trip back to grade school and the wonder that attended any introduction to the world beyond the schoolhouse walls.
The eclipse won’t return again to the United States for another decade. But its ability to dominate a workday afternoon is a good reminder about the rejuvenating value of walking outside in the middle of the day and appreciating Nature and the weather even if it’s a rainy day.
Almost everyone who attended an American elementary school trooped out to the school yard to gather leaves for art projects or for a rudimentary biology lesson. Snow days, more often than not, were an opportunity for innovative and energetic teachers to invite young minds to ponder the unique identity of every snowflake.
Field trips were opportunities to view dinosaur bones or gaze through telescopes at the planets. These lessons could have been absorbed by reading text books but teachers — the good ones at least — understood how young people are captivated and astounded by concepts of size, distance and time scale that gradually grow mundane in adulthood.
The hour leading up to the eclipse felt like the school bus ride to the museum or the historic site with its opportunity to liberally mix fun and time away from daily responsibilities with a little learning.
It also provided a few idle minutes to think about how eclipses, the moon’s waxing and waning and the ebb and flow of tides, is one of those constants that reduce Humanity and its troubles and triumphs to an almost insignificant footnote in the history of Earth, never mind the Universe.
Even in the Internet Age, there were bound to be a few people on Monday who were unaware of the eclipse and all of the hype preceding it. But walking around after 2 p.m. provided a subtle if unsettling sensation of sunlight slowly softening on a hot August afternoon and the temperature slightly dropping as the moon supplanted the sun.
It was hard not to wonder what the birds were thinking and easy to conjure up images of primitive people cowering at the specter of a shrinking sun. Science assured us the sun would return in full force Monday, but what if it didn’t?