We attended a gathering at a friend's family farm (approx 40 minutes from S/SW from our home) that afforded us 2.5 min of totality.
It was a trip to see hear the ambient natural noise quiet, and watch the birds fly home to roost, high up in the trees.
At totality, I took off my specs, looked around, and saw the same purple/orange sky one would expect at dusk. Jim had built a campfire, well in advance of The Event. As the ambient temp began to drop, all partiers gravitated to the fire ring. It was like so many campfires I'd attended over decades... but it happened within a 5-minute span of time- in the middle of the afternoon.
At one point during Totality, I took off my specs to look around.
It was a deep twilight version of what I'd seen just moments before. It truly felt like dusk/twilight- in a place that we've known well for more than 20 years- at all hours of the day/night.
Totally disorienting/mind-bending. The hairs on my arms stood at attention for at least 2-3 minutes. Even armed with the knowledge of hundreds of years of scientific background behind this phenomenon, I must admit: this event freaked me out, on a metaphysical level, and made me feel small- faced with the enormity of space, time, Earth's existence... and my miniscule place in the timeline that owns us all.
It's easy to understand how primitives who experienced this phenomenon thought that The World was somehow changed/coming to an end.
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Just before Me & My Hunny left the party, I called all attendees together. We all joined hands in a circle, and raised them to the sky.
Clemmy: "Eclipse- on three: ...one, two, three... ECLIPSE !!!"
When we finished that st00pit little ceremony of mine, we all locked eyes for a brief moment... and recognized that we'd communally experienced something that we'd never all share again.
It changed us all.
Until Death or Alzheimer's takes away my brain, I will never forget where/when I was, when I experienced this moment.
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