This is my view of the April 8th total solar eclipse from Niagara Falls.
I should not have seen it.
I was scheduled to work until 4 PM that day, with totality taking place around 3:20 or so, and from the moment I woke up until the approach of the big moment, the skies in Niagara were cloaked in a soupy veil of thick grey clouds.
Even though my project is replete with eclipse symbolism, I had never seen a solar eclipse with my own eyes, and on the drive in to my shift, I had kind of made my peace with the fact that I wasn’t about to. It was a shame, but evidently, fate had made her own arrangements for me that day.
I had bought two pairs of eclipse glasses for my friend “Ezlin” and I to watch it together, but as she was only scheduled to work until 1, and the eclipse was to happen before I’d be done, she’d made other plans with her brother and sister.
She can always tell what I’m feeling, even if I’m hiding it well from everyone else, and she knew I was disappointed, so she worked like mad that day and stayed an extra half hour to get as much done as possible. Thanks to her, I was able to finish everything I had to do by 2:50 and leave early.
I was home around 3. The skies were still impenetrable. I intended to simply watch the sky get dark and then bright again in my backyard.
Parked in the driveway, I scrolled through messages on my tablet as I sometimes do and thanked Ezlin for helping me to at least be at home instead of at work for the eclipse.
Her reply was an address in the Falls. She said if I hurried I could probably make it there in time. I raced out of the car and into the house, quickly threw on the first change of clean clothes I could find, ran back out, started the car and punched in the address, careening out of the drive toward Niagara Falls.
It should have been a seventeen minute drive, but I managed to whittle it down to about twelve. The clouds got sparser and the sky, brighter, the closer I got.
I will remember for a long time to come, gunning it down a rural backroad and looking up through the sunroof at the waning crescent of white light peering through the breaches in the wispy silver veils as Brain Damage ended and Eclipse blared on the speakers. I didn’t know exactly how long it was going to last. I thought I’d made a mistake and was going to miss it.
Niagara Falls had declared a state of emergency and I thought for sure the gridlock traffic would stop me. The roads in the Falls though, were eerily empty, and thank God they were. Apparently a huge number of people had cancelled their plans and reservations on account of this “state of emergency.” The result was that Niagara Falls (or at least the area where I was) was quieter than it is on a normal day.
I pulled onto the crescent with just a few minutes to spare. There were people outside on every lawn and in the street, and I quickly spotted Ezlin in one of the driveways.
The visibility was actually quite good. I grabbed my camera before the sun blackened and I took as many pictures as I could.
When I got back home that day, my roommate asked me if I saw it. Apparently at our house, where I had planned to stay, the clouds were so thick that you couldn’t even tell where the sun was.
If Ezlin had not gone to the Falls and told me to meet her there, I would not have seen it. If she hadn’t worked that extra half hour, I would not have made it there in time.
The whole thing reminds me a little of the old cog pendant I wore when I was a teenager — the timing gear. The piece of an engine that synchronizes the components and make things happen on time.
The timing of everything in the lead up was exceedingly strange.