‘Way beyond our expectations’: Here’s what it was like experiencing the eclipse in the path of totality

The rare magic of a total solar eclipse — and the hours of driving that many tourists had made to make sure they were in the path of totality — meant that the moments before the Great North American Eclipse were a little tense.

“Is anybody else’s heart racing?” shrieked one spectator, where The Independent was gathered with dozens of others at Bootlegger’s Basin, a reservoir just outside of Jeffersonville, Vermont.

The weather was a postcard 60 degrees and sunny — then as the partial eclipse went on, so did the layers, as the temperature dropped. The world began to look like it had an Instagram filter on it, colours muted and warped.

We all stood with our glasses on watching the tiny sliver of orange light get smaller and smaller and smaller until the clock hit 3.26pm and it disappeared entirely in one quick moment.

Then, darkness. The glasses came off, and the stunning visual of the moon covering the sun, a black sphere surrounded by streaming white light, more spectacular than any photograph can capture, dominated the sky.

“Look at the 360-degree sunset!” yelled out a nearby voice, who later introduced herself as Maggie Goldman from New Jersey. A former earth science teacher, it was her second time seeing a total eclipse, so she knew the drill.

“It’s like going to the Grand Canyon, you can’t describe it to someone,” Goldman, 63, told The Independent.

But we’ll try anyway. There was a golden glow around the entire landscape, the mountains eerily lit up from behind. The bright sunshine of a few minutes earlier had been replaced by twilight. The birds stopped chirping, and instead, exclamations of shock and awe filled the air.

“It was crazy just how still everything was,” said Colin Saint-Vil, 30, who’d driven up from Brooklyn. “It felt like one of the truest moments of time stood still.”

For just over two minutes people took photos and video, said “wow” repeatedly, and soaked up this once-in-a-lifetime moment.

“It was a real shared experience,” said Saint-Vil. “A communal acid trip — without the acid.”

Then, as quickly as it started, it was over. One ray of sunlight started to appear from behind the moon. The glasses came back on. Within seconds the light was back, like an instantaneous sunrise.

“As much as what we knew to expect, it was way beyond our expectations,” said Robert Nagler, a 65-year-old from Florida.

A sunshine-filled day in Vermont in April is not the usual, noted Nagler, who spends his winters in the area.

“We all knew the chance of it having a clear day this time of year is like 20 per cent,” Nagler said. “We are so, so blessed and lucky to witness this.”

For Michael Doyle, who’d driven up to Vermont from Philadelphia, watching the eclipse felt like the culmination of major life moments — he’d dreamed of becoming an astronaut as a child, even pursuing flight school, and had later instilled his love of astronomy in his children’s lives.

“I’ve known I was going to be here since 2017,” said Michael Doyle. “I just knew I had to come here. To get here was a hike, I came 7-8 hours up from Philadelphia — this spot, this area, this experience, I think I’ve waited 50 years for this. I was born to be here.”

Doyle had scouted out the best viewing spot the day before, bringing a chair up to a little peak next to the reservoir, giving him a full view of the entire area, as he listened to Soundgarden’s Black Hole Sun on repeat.

“What was the experience like watching it? Eudaimonia,” said Doyle, using the Greek word that is often translated to the highest good for humans. “I don’t express my emotions a lot but there was no holding back. It’s like seeing your children born.”

The partial eclipse continued for another hour, the temperature going back to over 60 and our faces feeling the crisp of a light sunburn, as the moon disappeared once more, not to return in a full solar eclipse over North America for another 20 years.

Not that Maggie Goldman will wait that long, she’s already preparing for the total eclipse in Spain in 2026.

“Our next family vacation,” she said.