It turned out that of all those I invited to accompany me to Solstice Hill (where a group of us had observed the Jupiter/Saturn conjunction at 0° Aquarius Winter Solstice 2020), only neighbor Jelene was really, truly, gung-ho. Everybody else had other plans. They obviously didn’t realize how extraordinary Solstice Hill is as a viewing point. It’s likely the highest point in Bloomington, and I figured that hardly anybody would be there.
And I was right.
There was even parking, directly below the hill!
Such a joke it turned out to be, the feared 300,000 people who were supposedly to inundate this town. Instead, it seems that there was so much fear-mongering, that most of Bloomington stayed home and I have absolutely no idea where the hordes ended up. There was some big event planned for the gigantic IU stadium (capacity 56,000), where William Shatner was to read poetry during the eclipse. (Huh?) But as of Friday afternoon, only 1500 had signed up. There was a big musical venue in nearby Brown County, for which the organizers rented 20 porta-potties at $1000 apiece, and only 200 people showed up.
Jelene was going to pick me up at 1:30, but she was so excited she came 20 minutes early.
So after hauling up her gear, there we were, on Solstice Hill, alone.
View to the east, new IU hospital in the distance . . .
View to the west, fraternity row . . .
And it stayed that way, with us mostly alone, except for the continuously loud thrumming sound of IU fraternity partiers, and a small group of IU students about 100 feet from us that did arrive a half hour later, plus two men on bikes who parked about 20 feet above us, and one other couple sitting 100 feet in the other direction. Marita and two of her friends who had driven down from Wisconsin did join us later, plus housemate Adam arrived on his bike just before totality, but otherwise, check this out.
Here’s Jelene, with her gear and in her Solar Eclipse shirt. A huge haul, with chairs, mats, pillows, cots . . .
I ended up lying prone on the grass, wanting to be utterly grounded for this extraordinary celestial event.
The Moon was to begin to cross the Sun at 1:49 PM, which it did! And from there, its shadow, and slowly, oh so slowly, began to cover more and more of the surface of the sun. By the time it was half-covered, I felt as if I was wearing sunglasses, so much had the light subtly changed. Full-on totality wasn’t until 3:04, until 3:08, by which time, the sky had gradually and inexorably darkened to the point where stars were visible on either side of totality.
I lay there in darkness, glasses on, in silent communion with millions of human souls who were also lying there, or sitting there, witnessing what is perhaps the most astonishing celestial event possible, one that brings us fully into awareness of the life-giving nature of the Sun, and of what still feels to me like a miracle, the fact that Sun’s diameter is 400 times greater than that of the Moon, while also being 400 times further from Earth than the Moon. Okay, so that’s the mathematics of it. That “explains” but doesn’t lessen the miracle: that on certain predicted occasions, the Moon’s dimeter exactly covers that of the Sun.
Some say (including the Navaho, and including Bernhard Guenther on twitter/X) that one should not witness an exact solar eclipse. That it is a time when darkness rules. Well, I say, so what? Dark and light are both part of our polarized 3D reality. And personally, I’m very glad that what has been hidden in darkness for so long is now beginning to see the light (I refer to massive corruption; especially of blackmail and bribery involving pedophilia, child trafficking, adrenochrome, satanic ritual abuse, how the trans phenomenon is abusing children, etc.) And I was very willing to lie there, prone, upon our good Mother Earth, and feel the cooler wind start to blow as darkness approached and took over, for four long, silent minutes (even the loud student thrumming stopped). And then, yes, elation, as the Sun’s light began to peek out again from under its cover and the students all cheered wildly.
One small strangeness: I noticed a continuous red spark at about 5:30 peeking out from the face of the Moon’s shadow. I’ve talked to others who noticed it too, but they remember it as being in different places, for example, my son Colin says it was at the 6:00 position. And someone else, also in Bloomington saw the spark at the 7 :00 position. Huh? What’s that about?
