| OCCULTATIONS - "The Great Solar Eclipse" |
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Quite a few years had passed since my last visit to LAX-it was in late December, 1983, actually-and the airport seemed no less confusing nor more friendly now than then. That previous time, when I was taking the first of many steps back to meaningful life from a deep grief, the facilities were quite primitive and under reconstruction for the upcoming Olympics. While waiting for my flight to Lima, I was fascinated to observe a group of figure skaters sharing the lounge with me. What intrigued me most was that nobody but me, in this soon-to-be Olympiad city, realized what wealth of Olympic and other gold these young people had mined. Both of us had enjoyed watching televised wintering sporting events from figure skating to professional ice hockey games, so these were faces I recognized: John Curry, arguably the best male figure skater ever; David Santee; Janet Lynn, our sweetheart from many competitions of an earlier period; and perhaps a half dozen others whose names have fled my memory. Here in this impersonal airport just four days after Christmas, however, they went unnoticed by other passersby; sic transit gloria," I scribbled in my trip notes. Their presence was particularly poignant for me since I had seen the very same troupe perform in Seattle just two months earlier. By then she was too weak to attend her biennial family reunion, in Albuquerque during the Hot Air Balloon Festival, but we did manage the two-hour drive to Seattle to spend the weekend in her parents' apartment. She was just able to walk into the arena, and I thought during intermission of calling for medical assistance, but the performers revived and captivated her, and we were glad we had come. It was the last time she was away from her own community except to return to the hospital for those last few days and nights. Sitting in the airport and recalling that night, I wished only that Janet Lynn, surprisingly petite but otherwise just as we "knew" her, had been the special guest star; an overweight and underpracticed Dorothy Hamill had tried to fill that role in Seattle. But, life often seems to leave at least a slight blemish on its otherwise perfect creations. On arrival at Los Cabos International Airport late that afternoon, Mitch, a professional colleague who had met me at LAX, and I, moved speedily through rather perfunctory entrance formalities, and while looking for a place to deposit our customs forms spotted a sign reading "Bob Mitchell," so we discarded the former and exited to meet the holder of the latter. Marylou Stewart had been introduced to Mitch many months earlier by a mutual colleague of ours who is rebuilding a house in Todos Santos, the village in which Marylou and her artist-husband, Charles, reside; she maintains two guest rooms in their intriguing, art-encrusted, house. I'll never forget the huge wolf spider with whom I shared more than one shower! During the drive to her home Mitch sat up front and chatted with Marylou. I had been up since 1:30, after only three hours of fitful sleep, and was content to sit quietly in the back of the van, sometimes listening to their conversation, but generally thinking my own thoughts. On my drive to the local airport early that morning I had been more than casually aware of the proximity of the waning crescent moon to the as yet unrisen sun. I had been watching the afternoon sky regularly before that, mentally charting the moon's steady approach to the sun. And now here I was, at my preselected viewing spot, fewer than 48 hours away from the next, long-ago predestined, occurrence of nature's greatest spectacle, a total solar eclipse. We spent the next day getting acquainted with Marylou's village, pausing only long enough to test out the Santa Fe, conceded by all with whom we spoke to be the best restaurant in Todos Santos. Although totally surprised to be dining on Italian food in Baja California, I found the freshly prepared lasagna easily the best I had ever tasted. A suitable nearby site was then found for observing the next day's eclipse in case our colleague's plan to drive to a spot near the Pacific had to be abandoned-the threat of an imminent and massive influx of amateur astronomers was still considered serious; souvenirs were purchased and a few photographs taken; and we quickly and gladly adopted the local custom of an afternoon siesta. Shadows of vertical objects have long intrigued me, and recognizing that the sun would pass nearly overhead at noon here near the Tropic of Cancer-we later were given an estimate of 23 deg 27 min N latitude and 110 deg 12 min W longitude by our geologist colleagues-I worked out the time of local apparent noon as 12:25 p.m. PDT; twenty minutes "late" because we were five deg west of the time-zone meridian, 105 deg, and five more minutes "late" because the real sun, which after all is what causes the shadow, was then lagging behind the mean sun, the fictitious object whose imaginary diurnal motion is the basis of civil timekeeping. After all that we each took pictures of the other's minimum shadow, and with appetites made ravenous by the hard thinking and no breakfast, we proceeded to the gourmet meal and quality nap mentioned above. After a restless night I was roused by the chirping and chattering of the birds Marylou keeps just outside my window, the only blemish on an otherwise perfectly tranquil setting, and went "outside" to be greeted by Charles' customary smiling "Buenas Morning" and a large cup of their marvelous strong, black, Mexican coffee, made from freshly ground beans. The inner rooms of the house, bedrooms and a sitting room, are enclosed by walls and surrounded by a space, essentially a walkway, under the main roof but otherwise open to the outside air; the kitchen and two bathrooms, under that same roof, are outside the walkway, which provides spaces near the kitchen for a dining table and chairs and just beyond the bathrooms for hanging out the wash, but Charles has chosen to conceal his studio in a local jungle well outside the main building. So far this morning the weather looked good, although there were some clouds on the northern horizon; but would it last? I puttered, drank another cup of coffee, read again a few brief articles on eclipses that I had brought along, drank more coffee, sat back in a rocking chair to reflect on the phenomena I hoped to observe, drank even more coffee, picked up a bedsheet from Marylou to provide a smooth surface on which to observe shadow bands, and then our colleagues arrived to take us to the ocean site; they had driven out earlier and supplied enough baksheesh to open the locked gate. Except for the group right on the beach-Germans, someone claimed, who had paid $10,000 for a package deal including tents and catered food-and the compact knots of people atop all the nearby high spots, with stragglers astride the ridges on either side, an uninformed visitor would have found the morning perfectly normal. A light breeze was blowing in off the Pacific, carrying with it an occasional puff of fog, but the day was otherwise warm and clear. And the group of people that joined me on the first-story roof of our absentee host, one Red Underwood, who was allegedly attending to personal business in Yakima, his former home, was if anything less varied than those I typically encounter while adventuring in any exotic far-off corner of the globe. A half dozen of us were connected in some way with Central Washington University: my physics colleague, Bob Mitchell; two colleagues from geology, Bob Bentley, also on the faculty, who had recommended Marylou's hospitality to us, and Jack Powell, a graduate student, who did most of the serious recordkeeping during the eclipse; Jack's young son, Chris; and Ernie Wagner, a geology undergraduate, who provided most of the comic relief during the proceedings. The rest of the fun was supplied by Peter Jackson, who playfully manned the camcorder, and with his wife Norie served as surrogate host-together they provided food and drink and stimulated considerable camaraderie; they spent their working careers in the Victoria-Vancouver region and now lived most of the year across the road from Red's pad. Completing the group were Valery and Weldon Ingraham, from Santa Rosa, who were felicitously celebrating their wedding anniversary, but were undecided on its number-their quiet but firm dissenting choices were the 28th and the 29th-and Nicholai Astrahantseff (accompanied by his dog), a retired architect from Southern California, who seemed completely familiar with the entire length and breadth of Baja. Chris was the first to yell out, "It's started, it's started," although I had a little earlier seen the flatness on the sun's edge through the aluminized Mylar Mitch had given me, but said nothing. His call got the crowd's attention, but there is really nothing very exciting about the early stages of an eclipse, unless of course one has no foreknowledge of what is happening. A half hour later, perhaps, "pinhole images" of the sun were mentioned, and Jack went down to the ground to view them under trees where sunlight was projected through small spaces among overlapping leaves. On returning he reported success, but I was not impressed when I visited ground level a short while later. Just as I returned to the roof, Mitch suggested the same result could be achieved by curling one's fingers together;this stirred us into action, and almost at once scores of images were being produced by the 110 fingers present. Then it was discovered that many more resulted from projection through a straw hat, and that a nice regular matrix was produced by a soda cracker: how that came to attend an eclipse party, I simply do not know. Withdrawing from the hilarity of that activity I became more aware of the grayness all around me. It was very different from the darkening of sunset; the air seemed heavy and damp, and although I felt that the breeze had freshened, my overall sensation was of quietness, of deadness. I didn't think of it then, but a week later, after I had returned home, the words of Adelaide Crapsey's "Triad," that I had used a few weeks earlier as the beginning of my eulogy to a friend who had died accidentally and much too young, again came to mind: "These be Could this experience be a fourth such thing? Fairly early in the operation Jack had rigged a pair of binoculars to a pole so that it projected an image of the sun onto a sheet of paper, on which he occasionally recorded tracings, and their times, of the partly occulted solar disk. I used these images as a way to estimate the number of minutes remaining before the onset of totality (MBT). At least 20 and possibly 30 MBT I first spotted Venus. Pointing, and announcing "Venus" several times, I attracted no attention and so withdrew to continue experiencing the deepening grayness and increasing coolness. About 10 MBT Jupiter appeared. The planetary ballet visible in the west just after sunset for the previous three or four weeks had captured my interest at home, and now it threatened to, and ultimately did, divert my attention from the eclipsed sun itself. The first view, in June, of Jupiter, Mars, and Venus in a nearly straight line descending obliquely to the horizon, with the twins, Pollux and Castor, joining Mars in another line at right angles to it, remains my favorite, but the various planetary triangles, near conjunctions of planet with planet or of planet with Regulus, the interchange in position of Venus and Jupiter, and most recently the emergence of Mercury (seen in binoculars) through the atmospheric haze, had all been exciting to observe. They should all be visible again in just a few minutes. But now time was working against us; there was so much to see. A few seconds BT-was it five, or maybe even ten?-we all saw the elusive shadow bands at our feet. (Red's roof was smooth enough to make Marylou's sheet unnecessary.) They moved rapidly westward, widened, and developed increasing contrast with time. It was exciting, almost breathtaking, to observe a phenomenon so ephemeral. And then I looked up just as the final tiny crescent sun disappeared into the brilliant flash of a diamond ring. That view persisted surprisingly long, and I stared at it seemingly without even breathing. And then the corona blazed into view, astonishingly extended and bright. And then all four planets and Regulus were visible; the star and Mars were not bright, but were still easily seen. The bright star Sirius blazed nearby, but I saw no others; perhaps I didn't search hard enough. I threw my arms into the air, however, and yelled, "I've lived." The entire 360 deg horizon, except where blocked by mountains, displayed early sunset colors, but the surroundings were not as dark as I expected. (Mitch surmised later that the brightness of the corona was responsible.) "Vance, look at the red prominence on the west limb," Mitch yelled; "Use your binoculars." In response to my question, Jack replied, "Three minutes left." So I looked and saw one. Magnificent. But I was still so intrigued with the overall ambience and the planetary alignment that I didn't really study the sun that carefully and probably missed other details. Then less than a minute remained, so I looked cautiously until that brilliant, magnificent, diamond ring flashed again, and people all over the beaches and ridges and hills and rooftops broke into cheers. Next the shadow bands again, which I missed this time, and then "only" Venus and Jupiter. "Six minutes and forty-two seconds," Jack intoned. A few minutes later I could no longer find Jupiter. Jack marked standing positions in front of a vertical pole atop which one could spot Venus, but it worked only once for me after I lost its original position. Mitch succeeded for quite some time, and Jack continued to find it easily for what seemed like an hour AT. I felt subdued and emotionally spent although not physically tired; in my view the others who observed this event seriously acted similarly. Perhaps the sensation most strongly mentioned afterward by our rooftop companions was the definite cooling BT and how long it persisted AT. Back at our lodgings after a very nice lunch-great Mexican food, but they didn't serve beer!-at the Pink Door with Mitch, Jack, and Chris, I sketched notes on my observations and then read them to Mitch for his corrections and additions. Marylou had been busy preparing food for the town's roast pig dinner that night, so she had watched and recorded the proceedings on Mexican TV. We watched the tape later in the afternoon, but it was no match for the real thing. She did, however, add three very interesting observations to supplement what we had seen: first, her Mexican neighbors did not come outside until totality was well underway, and they returned indoors quite quickly; second, many Mexicans believe that pregnant women should remain indoors during an eclipse; and finally, her parakeets had fallen asleep during the darkness, the female lightly, but the male quite heavily with his head tucked under a wing, and when in the increasing lightness she awoke and began singing, awakening him, he groggily pulled out his head and shook it in apparent disbelief at the brevity of the night! Charles, meanwhile, had watched events from the comfort of a chair on his own roof; uncharacteristically, he had nothing to add to the discussion. That evening's dinner, served outdoors in an enclosed courtyard to a background of live music, was informal, relaxed, festive, and tasty, particularly the roast pork and Marylou's beans, which had been simmering on her stove since our arrival two days earlier. Very few delicacies serve me better than quality Scotch for toasting successful adventures, however, and since I was very impressed with everything about this eclipse, my recollections of the evening are much less trustworthy than those of my Presbyterian colleague. I slept soundly that night for the only time there and awoke refreshed and happy the next morning. Papayas from Red's trees had been distributed as we left his place the previous day, and I enjoyed half a huge one; it wasn't quite ripe enough, having lost some sunshine during the eclipse, but it and some marvelous Mexican coffee made a more than adequate breakfast. The papaya also suffered in comparison to the tree-ripened mangoes that fell to the ground in a discontinuous, cacophonous cascade at Bentley's place; we had each eaten several dozen of those on previous days. I strolled around Todos Santos one last time, taking a few more pictures, and then returned to pack up my gear while Marylou had the van serviced. A quick sandwich of pig left from the night before, washed down with a final cup of coffee, more than sufficed for lunch. We said our goodbyes to Charles and left. On the way back to the airport I sat in front and chatted with Marylou; she is a great talker, knows a lot about the region, and the seaside she described as we drove by is fascinatingly beautiful. We went into Cabo san Lucas and parked at the wharf, for as she said, "You're here, so you should take a glass-bottomed boat out to Land's End and see the arch." So we did that while she relaxed over a cold drink on the patio of a wharfside restaurant. The surf was up, which made the boatride extra fun (and Mitch's photography extra difficult), and the people on board were happy and enthusiastic, both because of the eclipse and also the day's fine weather. The ride was of more than sightseeing interest to me since the most recent addition to my antique map collection is a 1690 Coronelli depiction of the "Sea of the South," as the Pacific Ocean was first known, featuring "California" as an island at the map's top center; Cabo san Lucas is shown as a geographical feature, not a town. Nearly back to the pier, we were rammed by another "captain," who did nothing to reduce speed or reverse engines but just kept turning his boat toward ours; the bump was hard but evidently harmless, and we disembarked with nothing worse than a little skinburn from wind and sun. After saying farewell to Marylou at the airport entrance, we entered and found the end of a long serpentine consisting of passengers for two departing flights; we had nearly two hours until our scheduled departure, and there were three check-in stations. We just did make the flight only to find that our seat assignments had been mishandled. I had expected better because Alaska Airlines had reserved its cheap seats for tour groups-"Sky and Telescope" seemed to be the dominant one on our flight-thus forcing us to purchase first-class seats. What we got was hardly first-class service! As a result of the confusion Mitch and I did not sit together, but I did enjoy an extremely interesting, far-ranging conversation with the articulate, engaging young woman seated next to me. The airline will still hear from me, but my complaints will be considerably softened. To an astronomer an occultation is the passage of one celestial object in front of another, thus blocking out the light from the latter; a total solar eclipse, in which the moon occults the sun, is the most spectacular such event. In this context "occult" is a transitive verb, but used as an adjective or as a noun, the word assumes a more supernatural, mysterious connotation. Somehow, in looking back to the "Great Eclipse of 1991," my mind has recalled the blanking out, the occulting, of several important human relationships. And each time, of course, sunlight has broken through again to dispel the dense, damp, darkness of death. But the normalcy that almost immediately follows a solar eclipse does not occur nearly so soon in human affairs, and the re-established human relationship, although it can be as exciting and normal as the original one, is, of necessity, quite different. She had insisted I take her assigned seat by the window, evidently because of some discomfort caused by looking down at the ground, which I gladly did. It hardly mattered, however, because our animated conversation fully occupied the two-plus hours from Los Cabos to LAX. Just before landing we exchanged phone numbers, and after passing through entrance formalities, we shook hands firmly and mutually expressed the hope that we would meet again. Our wishes were sincere, of that I'm quite certain, but I doubt that either of us thinks it can happen. But what if it does? And if not this time, perhaps it will in similar circumstances after another trip. What then? It would be interesting to see what Charles includes from the eclipse experience in his next series of paintings. W. Vance Johnson 11 Jul 91 |