It comes about so gradually, just about five minutes before totality, when we get a sense the world is darkening, but not like dusk. It is a flat, eerie kind of darkening, without dimension because there is no slant of light and shadow. A new experience altogether. It is noticeably cooler, the birds and insects make noise, almost frantic, and then fall silent.

We nestle in the crook of a split rail fence, a thing to remind us we are in the park of Lincoln’s boyhood home. Two cows and two horses graze in the low field just beyond it. As minutes tick toward totality the animals move lower in the field, settling under a tree. The horses stand nuzzling each other, one cow lies down, has been like that for a good half hour before the sky changes from day to night, and she stays down for thirty more minutes as the moon moves toward the far edge of the sun.

We sit in lawn chairs in this quiet lane, preferring it to the hubbub of the visitor’s center. We chat, someone plays with a colander as she tries to catch half-moon shadows on a white piece of paper. Off and on we don safety glasses and watch the black moon bite perfect arcs out of the bright gold sun. I try to photograph the image, so pristine and exact, but I never quite manage it and give up all together.

My record of the eclipse will best be kept inside, a memory to savor, not some far off glimpse of an image, should I ever scroll past it on some future phone.

When the moon finally covers the sun completely, the “diamond ring” shows to brilliant effect. We take off our glasses and stare for the only minute or two it will be safe. Then, it just seems dark, like evening has fallen, but not like the darkest night. There is a golden, almost red glow hovering at the horizon, and not only in the West, but all around.

As darkness descends, we hear in the distance a swell of whoops and hollers where the crowds have gathered in the obvious places, parking lots, rest areas. Like cheering the home team.

Totality only lasts two minutes, then the world–not the sky–but the earth from the ground up, begins to lighten. The quality of light is odd, and then it doesn’t seem odd anymore, as if this will be the wattage of the sun from now on.

A bulb that has dimmed.

Maybe it is because all the anticipation is gone, or now we know what we are looking at, so it isn’t as unsettling as before. Even so, something big has happened, and the world seems off for the rest of the afternoon.
Some find it humbling, a sense of insignificance, the way we are small.

Perhaps I felt that in 2017 when I first experienced the darkness of a total eclipse, the way the moon obliterated the sun and the light with it. And yet, the moon is tiny compared to our sun. It is distance that gives it stature, makes the eclipse possible. No, I feel a kinship with this big thing, a sense of purpose of what my job is here. And that job is to do nothing but open up to it. Protect my eyes, look up when it is safe, let a sigh or a whisper escape my lips. Keep the right distance. Check on the cows.