Although we planned this trip for months and the actual trip from departing my house to sitting in a farmer’s field took about 12 hrs., it all boiled down to 2 minutes and 16 seconds, an event the books called Totality. Before I witnessed it, totality was just a word, whose definition was evident by its name. From the first glimpse of the moon beginning its cross in front of the Sun to the last second when it left the Sun’s face was about 4 hours. The moon moved slowly, about the same speed that the moon travels across the night sky… well actually, exactly the same speed. There are lots of events to measure time; like the 4 hours it took the moon to complete move across the Sun’s face. Or the 3 minutes timer I set on my wrist watch and hit infinite repeat. It was my reminder to look through the camera viewer, center the Sun in my field and snap another shot. My hope was to eventually have a stop-action movement of the moon across the full face showing all the variation of crescents. I even set a time for totality, but I set it for 2 minutes, not 2:16. At the exact last sight of the Sun’s light before darkness began, I started the timer. At that moment I removed the heavy photographic film from my lens, adjusted the exposure and focus, as I was going full manual, using only natural light, at least that was what I was planning for, the Corona. If there was one at this precise moment it would be too dim, relative to the Sun, to make it through the filter. I was hoping to photograph it, if it appeared. The reason for the alarm going off at 2 minutes, was to leave me 16 seconds to get ready for the Sun’s reappearance as the black disk of the moon, moved past a total block and allowed the Sun to emerge, completely washing out the Corona, if there was one, so I’d need to reinstall my filter and reset the camera’s exposure and focus. At first it seemed like it would be a non-event. In the last second or two before totality, when there was the thinnest sliver of sunlight, our world was dim, like a day with very heavy cloud cover. We still had shadows and most of our senses still registered diminished levels of wind, temperature, sounds and smells. Then, within a matter of seconds everything changed. I was standing in the same place with the same cars and people around me, but I was in a different place, a different environment, a place where nothing made sense, nothing was familiar, it seemed dream-like and other worldly. We were in totality.
