There was a solar eclipse across North America yesterday, Monday, April 8, 2024. At around 3:30PM Atlantic Daylight Time yesterday, the moon began to move in front of the sun, fully covering it for 3 minutes 8 seconds in Miramichi, New Brunswick, starting at 4:34PM. If you haven’t heard about the eclipse, I assume you’re one of my non-North American audience, or apparently my friend Michéle, who didn’t know until we told her at lunch on Sunday.
I had heard about the eclipse, a year ago, which is when City of Miramichi social media first alerted me to Miramichi being almost exactly in the middle of the path of totality. I was deep in planning a conference, and ignored it. Later, the buzz began to grow - but I had just accepted a new job, and was leaving town.
And I put it away. That thought sat on a shelf in my head for some weeks, until my partner suggested we go see the eclipse in Miramichi.
“But I just left,” I said, somewhat stupidly.
Regardless, I sorted my vacation, using a couple of the meagre pro-rated hours I’ve accumulated so far. I booked a hotel room - the Rodd, in downtown Chatham, known for being the fanciest hotel in town, but also the only one in Chatham. I wanted to be in Chatham, I reasoned. It would be close to the festivities in town, but more importantly, the former town of Chatham in the amalgamated Miramichi is where I lived for eight years until a few months ago, and I wanted to go wander around like I used to do. Of course, you can’t go home again, but I did a decent - actually better - approximation, with a king bed and cable, both which I never had in my attic apartment.
I texted my friends to say I was coming to town for the eclipse, and set up some meals with those available. We hugged and laughed and ate and gossiped about everyone we knew, the other new jobs which people had taken in the months since I’d left, plans for the eclipse, and the state of healthcare, a constant topic for a bunch of nurses and a former hospital librarian.
But it was eclipse day that I was waiting for, the anticipation buzzing through my body all weekend. I thought it would be neat, probably fun. We were going to go to the Miramichi Airport for the viewing there. We were going to meet up with some of my Miramichi friends there, and some of our Halifax friends who’d brought some exchange students up with them. We’d had dinner together the night before, drank some good Miramichi beer, and played a game.
My partner and I ducked into the new cheese shop on Water Street (which I loved and was also annoyed that they opened three months after I stopped living within walking distance of that address), getting grilled cheeses for lunch and a pile of cheeses and meats for a hotel room cheese board that evening. We lazed about and then decided to head over to the airport around 2:30.
A mistake, you see. Too used to the complete lack of traffic in Miramichi, I severely underestimated how many other people would be trying to also get there. A drive of five minutes took forty. We never found my friends. We realized we should have brought chairs or something to sit on. It was very sunny out and were we really going to stare at the sky for a couple hours? My partner didn’t bring a book.
None of this ended up mattering.
Have you seen a solar eclipse? This was my first one, and I get it now. I understood with perfect clarity in that moment why people had travelled so far just for these minutes. They start slow, with the moon gliding its way into the sun’s path. Armed with our eclipse glasses, we peered up at it every few minutes, from our patch of asphalt. And it was a little bit boring, for the first bit.
But then you notice the changes: the air starts to get cooler, the wind picks up. There’s a change coming.
And then the world was dark, and we took off our glasses to look at the moon blocking the sun. There was a thin line of orange on the horizon, it was suddenly full-on cold, and we all gasped, trying to take it in. Some people cheered. Some clapped. There were 10,000 people at the airport yesterday in Miramichi, and we were all looking at the sky together, watching this celestial event.
I thought it would be neat, a kind of fun thing to do, and an excuse for a trip to Miramichi. I didn’t expect the awe and feelings of profound change in those minutes. I stood outside and looked at the sky while it was dark in the middle of the day, and I’ll never be the same again, honestly. It was spectacular.
NOTE: there will be no shitty photos of the eclipse - I have them, of course, but I was never going to take a good photo of it with my iPhone 11, which is getting on in years. And also no photo or video can really prepare you for it. I keep returning to my memory of the moment it was dark, and I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to do it justice. Certainly no photo or video can capture the feeling of what it was like when the sky went dark. I was giddy in that moment, grinning like a fool. I wanted to laugh and cry. I hugged my partner, and I joined in the cheers of the crowd.
I don’t think any photo I could have taken with a proper setup could do it justice. Even the gorgeous examples I’ve seen from local photographers don’t hold up to seeing that sparkle. So glad you guys got up here to see it!
This is great! Glad you had fun!