Deborah's Excellent Solar Eclipse Adventure

Tailgate party at Lassen

I've posted earlier about my trek up to Lassen to view the annual solar eclipse in 2012. My same friend organized an expedition up to Oregon for this year's total eclipse, but for various reasons I didn't go. However, my older daughter, Sarah, and I did get a grand view of it from near home (about 72%).

Our first thought was to walk up the street to a place unimpeded by redwood trees, but Sunday morning brought such a heavy marine layer, one that didn't clear until early afternoon, that we looked for an alternate plan. I called various friends farther inland and finally connected with one, about an hour's drive away, who hadn't ordered eclipse shades in time. So Sarah and I, eclipse shades in hand, hit the road very early in case there was significant rush hour traffic. There was.

So the eclipse began with me behind the wheel and Sarah peeking out the window through

Deborah viewing the 2017 eclipse

Sarah viewing the 2017 eclipse

her shades going, "Wow." I tell you, if I had not already seen that first teensy bite out of the Sun, I would have been majorly bummed. Instead my reaction was one of joy -- my kid was thrilling to the very same thing I had loved.

It soon became apparent that we weren't going to arrive until the maximum coverage. I was talking myself into that being okay. Sarah called our friend, who said that the overcast was pretty heavy at their place. So, since we were in sun with only a few clouds, we pulled off the freeway, turned on to a side street and then the first open parking lot. It happened to belong to the Tzu Chi Foundation for Compassionate Buddhist Relief. We scrambled out of the car to see the eclipse at about 25%, with all the ooohs and aaahs and I remember how cool this is! excitement.

Then came the best part. The foundation offices looked closed, but a volunteer drove in and came over to see what we were doing. In huge excitement, I offered her my shades. "Oh, can you see it from here?" she asked. And then looked. Amazement and delight lit up her face. We talked about what was happening in the sky, she looked again and again...and then she ran inside to bring out all the workers she could find. All of them reacted in the same way. Including the special needs children who were doing a cleaning project. Later we toured the facility and talked about giving kindness and love. We didn't specifically talk about sharing wonder, but that was the high point of the eclipse for me. Not seeing it myself, but seeing the delight in someone else's experience of the heavenly wonders.

By the time we got to my friend's house, the skies and cleared. She'd tried to watch it through a colander, but the holes were the wrong shape, leaf-shaped instead of round, and it didn't work. But there was still about 25% left of the eclipse, so she and her family got to see it after all.

It's wonderful to view such a rare and glorious phenomenon. It's even more wonderful to make it possible for another person to have that same experience.

Eclipse Diary, Part 4 - Afterthoughts

Chris at Lassen Park

The next morning, my friend and eclipse-buddy Chris and I drove up to Lassen Volcanic National Park, as she had never been there before and it seemed a shame to drive all the way and not see any of it. The road was closed by snow only a few miles past the entrance, but we stopped to goggle at the snow-draped mountains and sulfur vents. As the perfect ending to our adventure, we met a trio of avid cross-country skiers, preparing for the day’s outing. We swapped eclipse stories and theirs topped ours, hands down. They’d made the ascent to the top of Lassen, broken open a bottle of champagne while they watched the eclipse, and then skied back down.

Eclipse Skiing Party

Looking back, I’m struck by the wide range of knowledge of the people we encountered – from the astronomer who had not only his telescope (with solar lens) and camera (with solar lens), but everything hooked up to a laptop, and the physicist who explained to anyone who asked how a pinhole camera works and why the Moon looks red in a lunar eclipse, to the wine-sippers who hadn’t even realized when the eclipse began or what they were seeing. I fell somewhere in between. I want to understand what I’m seeing, but at heart, I’m more interested in what it means in the lives of the people who, to varying degrees and for varying reasons, formed a spontaneous community. I want to spin it all into stories. I suppose that’s why I’m a writer and not an astronomer.

But it sure was cool.

Eclipse Diary, Part 3 – Ring of Fire

Deborah's attempt to photograph the eclupse (far right)

Photographing through a welding visor

The solar system is mostly empty space with leeetle teeny objects hurtling round a star (and some of them, around others) that, while quite medium and ordinary by galactic standards, is by far the largest, most massive object anywhere around. So Earth is hurtling around the Sun, the Moon is hurtling around Earth (and therefore, around the Sun in a sort of perambulatory – not a correct astronomical term, I believe – fashion). And every once in a while, the Moon comes between the Sun and the Earth, thereby blocking the sun’s rays and casting a shadow over a leeetle teensy area of Earth’s surface. Sometimes the disk of the Moon obscures the Sun – that’s a total eclipse, and in the area of the resulting shadow, there’s no sunlight, so it appears to be night – but, because the Moon isn’t always the same distance from the Earth and objects appear smaller when they are farther away, at other times, they line up but a ring of Sun remains – an annular eclipse. And because the lineup has to be exact for either of these to happen, the shadow cast by the Moon falls on only a small area of Earth. Hence, our journey to Lassen Volcanic National Park. (My husband stayed at home and got to see a partial eclipse.)

Astronomer Explains His Strategy

Once we’d established ourselves in a suitable viewing area, hoping fervently that the clouds we’d seen earlier would remain cooperatively absent, the countdown began. Solar eclipse shades are very cool things, if a bit hokey. They’re cheaply made, like glasses used for 3-D movies, but the film has to cut out all the harmful rays from the Sun in order to allow direct viewing, so everything else looks utterly black. I’ve spent my lifetime Not Looking Directly At The Sun, so at first it was odd (to say the least) to put on these black-out shades and do just that. The Sun appeared as the single luminous object in a field of black.

And then…a tiny dimple appeared in the orange disk.

Eclipse Diary, Part 2 – A Community of Sun-Gazers

Mt. Lassen from Lake Almador

This is the second part of my solar eclipse adventures, accompanied by my intrepid neighbor and walking buddy, Chris.

Today’s lesson, young grasshopper, is that things turn out the way they do, no matter how different that is from how you expect them to be. All the information we had been given was that the best place to view the annular solar eclipse was from Lassen Volcanic National Park, plus there would be an educational presentation at the Information Center auditorium. Life, however, does not always follow what is given out in magazine articles and websites. When, after a morning of hiking around Lake Almador, we arrived at the park entrance, a long line of cars awaited us. The time for the presentation approached, with almost no forward progress. At last, when the entrance kiosk came into view, a Park Ranger informed us that not only was the parking lot full, or about to become so, but that we would not be able to view the entire eclipse from the park. She advised driving to Redding, about 90 miles away. She mentioned the Mineral Vista Point, considerably closer, but thought that the parking area might already be full.

In the tiny town of Mineral, we stopped to chat with the proprietors of the all-purpose lodge/market/general store. A number of people who’d turned back at Lassen had clearly decided that the way to view the eclipse was from the café patio, a cold beer in hand. They didn’t seem to mind that there were some rather large hills to the west. We, on the other hand, decided to try the Vista Point, reserving the lodge parking lot as a backup plan.

Eclipse Tailgate Party

When we arrived at the Vista Point, some 10 miles down the road, the formal parking areas were full, but we nabbed a shady spot off the road. I suspected that we would be only the first of many to park there, and I was right. We found an astronomer setting up a telescope and camera with special solar lenses. Before long, we’d struck up conversations not only with him, but his physicist friend and wife, and a family from San Jose. (I confess, I broke the ice here when I noticed the teen wearing a shirt saying, “Bow Ties Are Cool,” and began a Whovian conversation, during which Chris – who is an ardent Trekkie – entered into a spirited debate with the young man on the relative merits of DS9 and TNG, therefore imbuing the viewing with the flavor of a gathering of fans.) That family had brought a welding visor, and father and son busily figured out how to take photos of the eclipse through the visor glass plus the eclipse glasses.

Eclipse Diary, Part 1: Anticipation and Entitlement

Deborah's attempt to photograph the eclipse

 To begin with, I did not intend to make a journey – a pilgrimage – to see the May 20 annular solar eclipse. The reason is not that I am indifferent to such a spectacle, but that for a long time, I have operated under the principle that if seeing the wonders of the sky – or any other wonders – involves expense or training or any significant break in the daily work routine, then I am not entitled to it. I suspect this attitude – what my husband teasingly refers to as my “poverty consciousness,” stems from being the child of working class parents who came of age in the Great Depression, and who as a young person myself rarely had much disposable income. What I did not understand then, and am coming to understand as I get older, is that life is an adventure to be lived, not scrimped through. Some years back, I had to make a choice between returning to school for training that would take all my time and energy for several years with the end result of earning a modestly comfortable living, or to keep on at my current day job and being able to write. I had to ask myself, what is really important? Being able to buy new clothes instead of picking through thrift stores? Or sailing on my dreams, spinning out the stories that are in me to tell? I picked the dreams, and I have never regretted that choice. It changed me, of course, not just the writing but the very realization that as far as I know, I will only go through this life once. The world and the heavens are full of mysteries and glory, just waiting for me to look.

At Wyoming Infrared Observatory, 2011

Studying astronomy had been somewhere on my list. I call it a “wistful list,” or maybe a “wishful list,” not a “bucket list.” The litany went, Someday when I have time…but Cabrillo College is a 45 minute drive away… but the classes are at night and night-time driving in the mountains is exhausting… but… but…” Then last spring I saw an announcement for Launch Pad Astronomy Workshop, a one-week intensive course for science fiction writers held at University of Wyoming Laramie, created and directed by astronomer/sf writer Mike Brotherton, and funded by NSF. “They’ll never take me,” I thought, “I write fantasy these days.” But it’s just as important for fantasy (and horror, and Romance, and thriller, and mystery writers) to get the science right. So I applied.

They accepted me. I danced around the house, whooping with delight. That summer, I proceeded to get my brains stuffed with amazing facts and ways of looking at the universe; I met fantastic writers and scientists, and shared their passion for exploring – by telescope, space shuttle or imagination – beyond the borders of our home planet. Every day, my mind was filled to overflowing with story ideas and incredibly nifty data; at night, we gazed at the stars for ourselves. If I had not been willing to take that chance, to say, “Hey, what about me?” then I would have missed out on so much.

Fast forward a year, and I see on the astronomy and science websites that I now subscribe to that there will be an annual eclipse of the sun (one in which the occlusion is incomplete, so there remains a “ring of fire” around a dark central shadow), visible not too far away (but too far to drive and then return home easily in the same day). The old “poverty consciousness” voices began their murmuring. Never mind that this is the closest I’d be able to see a solar eclipse from (or that it doesn’t involve staying up until 3 am, another bugaboo that assumes more importance as the decades pass). My neighbor and walking partner said, “I’ve booked a motel room near Lassen so I can go up and see the eclipse, and I’m looking for someone to share the room.”

And the world stopped.