TOTAL SOLAR ECLIPSE

EVANT, TEXAS 8 April 2024

We chased the blue skies out of overcast Austin for an hour and a half. We had to outrun the clouds, and used weather maps as our driving guide. Once we were 1 hour outside of Austin, we started to see pockets of people set up to watch, on hillsides and in parking lots, in front of diners and road stands. Lawn chairs, telescopes, paper eclipse glasses at the ready. Very festive feeling, exciting. But it was still overcast above, and we kept following the maps onward.

With maybe 30 minutes to go before the sky phenomena was to start, we pulled into the little town of Evant, TX (pop 426). A perfect one-stoplight town. There were a few dozen people sitting around outside between the diner and the parking lot, glasses at the ready. The place was buzzing. But we wanted to be by ourselves and out in nature for the experience, in order to feel the light change and hear and see wildlife reactions, so we traced a small county road out of town (following the maps!) then down a local gravel road and pulled off in front of a beautiful piece of property for sale. Through an iron fence, Texas scrub trees and rolling hill country. Across the road, an immense field of purple flowers with goats grazing in the distance under far trees, trying to stay out of the sun.

At last the sky was a perfect blue - no clouds! Perfect skies all thru totality - which was almost an out of body experience. When the light changed – it got dimmer and dimmer – it was magical. The shift in light across the landscape all thru totality was astounding, We didn’t really detect the light dimming until the moon was maybe 80 or 85 percent of the way across the sun – so, only near the very end, even after such a large portion of the sun was already covered, did it start to dim. Shows just how bright the sun is. But then suddenly it was eerie twilight and the goats were bleating and the birds cawing. We could then pull the eclipse glasses off and stare directly at the corona, blazing in the darkened sky. It looked unreal, like science fiction. We had The landscape turned pale red sunset all around, 360 degrees of sunset, an eclipse phenomena I’d read about. As the darkness took hold, crickets started up a chorus – they thought night had descended, and kept it up for quite awhile after the light came back. We saw the beads just before totality, and the diamond ring briefly just before the sun flamed back on and it was ending. As the moon drifted off the face of the sun some cloud cover finally rolled in, but we were able to watch all the way thru the moon’s exit, just the three of us, out in nature, with no one around. Couldn’t have been more perfect. What a time! Very moving.

Afterwards, more road trip enroute back to Austin: Storms Drive-In, Lampasas, Texas, a drive thru restaurant straight outta the 50s. Fried pickles, fried cheese-stuffed jalapeños, malted milkshakes, burgers, whoopee!. Wall sign said ‘Elvis ate here’.

Stopped to pick wildflowers on a gravel road. Plenty of steers, goats, cows, horses, and also emu, llamas, and armadillos (most roadkill). Further along, Texas roadside junk-shop-of-our-dreams. Rusty old tools and giant saws, wirework sculptures, cow skulls and so much other rural bric-a-brac, Texas-style. Also serving pulled pork sandwiches which left Sage in heaven. Run by a woman from Australia, of all places, out here in the hills of Texas. We had a nice conversation with her – and with so many people today. So odd that there was an earthquake in NYC while we were out there in Texas - I never knew there were earthquakes on the East Coast…

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