Eclipsing

27/28 August 2007

Normally, the only total eclipses I see are those that occur when a cat passes between me and my reading lamp. Unlike Mother Nature, these can typically be hurried along with a little shove.

However, when I heard that there’d be a total eclipse of the moon early on Tuesday morning, I asked Don if he’d be up for a camping trip. He usually is, so we got our kit together and set off down to Gilroy and the campground at Coyote Lake. We picked up the start of the commute–heavy traffic in heavy heat–but as soon as our exit came up we were out in open farmland which quickly segued into rolling hills and delicious twisty roads shaded by trees. Much better!

The campground is down a rather narrow lane with some steep switchbacks. There was nobody at the entrance station so we swooped around the large campground twice before settling on a space right beside what would have been the lake if they weren’t all drying out. Then we sat and chilled for a little while and began to set up the tent until an officious git nice ranger came and whined at us for not paying yet. Now, we’ve been camping at Santa Clara County campgrounds a dozen times over the last few years, and not once have we been hassled to pay before we set up tent. I guess he thought we were going to set up our tent, have a quicky, then leave.

I went off to pay. There was still nobody at the entrance station, but I used the machine. Since they didn’t provide pens and I didn’t have one I then had to loop around the campground yet again to borrow a pen from Don. I’m sure the approximately three other campers at the site were glad that the crazy bikers were done riding round the perimeter and finally settled with an entire quarter of the campground to themselves.

We settled in. Small creatures rustled. Lizards sunned themselves, one so tiny that it took refuge under my shoe. A pair of black-tailed deer sauntered out of the woodland and across the stretch of green that used to be a lake (or, more accurately, a reservoir). A large number of annoying buzzy creatures annoyingly buzzed us. Don put charcoal in the fire pit and warmed up a can of stew.

I sat, watched, relaxed as the setting sun painted the dried-out grass glow a mellow gold. The campground was deliciously quiet and peaceful and it was just fine to sit there, soaking up the quiet.

      

Then the moon rose, a great white disk that is almost impossible to photograph with my camera. I got one “good” shot. Good-bye sun, hello moon. We stayed outside until it became chilly, reading by the light of our Borg earpieces. Then we settled in, reading some more, but I was tired and passed out early. I had taken care to learn from past mistakes and positioned my inflatable mattress so that it was level and my head was uphill.

Learning from past experience, I had also brought my own pillow along. And what a difference that made. I slept for hours, waking up briefly to hear a coyote’s eerie song echoing across the valley, and then again not until the moon was directly overhead and starting to be eclipsed. I woke Don up and we went to watch.

An eclipsed moon is much like an eclipsed sun in the early stage, though you don’t risk going blind if you look at it directly. An ever-growing chunk is eaten away, turning it into a crescent. The sky grows darker and darker, but the crickets don’t stop their song. More and more stars are visible, and we saw the Milky Way. I lay back on my bike, watching as the heart of our galaxy became visible, a fuzzy band filled with millions of stars. Three meteorites blazed through the sky like silent rockets on the Fourth of July.

When the eclipse becomes total, the moon is still visible. Its color is red, catching whatever reflected light there is from the Earth. We stayed, watching, on the balmy night until we were too tired to continue. We slid on the rain fly, and twenty minutes before totality were once again fast asleep.

I awoke at eight, and it was already eighty degrees. Three hours later it was 120 degrees inside the tent. The day promised only raw, impossible heat and our site had little shade. We had done what we aimed to do: we had witnessed the moon’s darkness, and thus we went home.