I’m Being Followed by a Moon Shadow

Before joining the great trek to see the total eclipse on April 8, I thought it worth chiming in with a few thoughts on these erratic celestial milestones.

This year’s total eclipse, the last in the U.S. until 2044, will follow a path close to that of one that swept across the country in 1806. It was a time of aggressive encroachment on the lands of indigenous Shawnee and other tribes in Ohio and Indiana. Those standing in the path of the onslaught were led by the brilliant war chief Tecumseh.

Tecumseh’s younger brother was known as “The Prophet.” The governor of the Indiana territory, William Henry Harrison, tried to diminish the brothers’ standing by challenging The Prophet to perform a miracle. The Prophet predicted that in one month, in the middle of the day, “the darkness of night will thereupon cover us and the stars will shine round about us.” On June 16, his prediction came true.

It’s possible that Tecumseh, who would go on to earn a reputation as one of the most capable and valiant defenders of indigenous peoples, had learned of the eclipse from an almanac. He spoke English well and had been exposed to reading material. The prediction enhanced The Prophet’s prestige, but in 1811 he lost to the invaders at the Battle of Tippecanoe. Tecumseh perished in fighting two years later; Indian fortunes continued to darken.

Farther east, near Otsego Lake in upstate New York, a teenage James Fenimore Cooper had also observed the 1806 eclipse. “Never have I beheld any spectacle,” wrote the future author of The Last of the Mohicans, “which so plainly manifested the majesty of the Creator, or so forcibly taught the lesson of humility to man as a total eclipse of the Sun.”

This year, local authorities are concerned about the prospect of traffic jams as modern starwatchers swarm the path of totality. Cooper reported “twenty wagons bearing travelers stopped on their course, every face was turned toward heaven.” He observed women standing in the street “with streaming eyes and clasped hands, and sobs.” He himself saw the world with new eyes as the light of the sun returned.

Celtic images of an eclipse, 3340 BCE.

Eclipses, because of their rarity, draw together people across vast reaches of time. Ancient Irish astronomers carved images of an eclipse into stone megaliths more than 5000 years ago. In China, people beat on gongs to scare away the monster devouring the sun. Fear and foreboding, expectation and wonder have accompanied these sudden, brief disruptions in the regularity of our world.

Eclipses have been instrumental in learning about the world beyond the earth. They are an invaluable aids to scientists, revealing the otherwise invisible corona that surrounds the brilliant disc. For reasons still mysterious, the temperature of the corona is nearly 3.6 million degrees Fahrenheit, vastly hotter than that of the sun’s surface, where it’s a cool 10,000 degrees. An eclipse also helped scientists discover the element helium, named for the Greek sun god, Helios.

Poets, too, have drawn material from these astounding events. The Greek writer Archilochus, who died around 650 BCE, observed that “Nothing is unexpected, nothing can be sworn untrue, and nothing amazes since father Zeus the Olympian has veiled the light to make it night at midday.”

Watching an eclipse, 1911.

Emily Dickinson, observing an eclipse in 1877, wrote:

It sounded as if the Streets were running
And then — the Streets stood still —
Eclipse — was all we could see at the Window
And Awe — was all we could feel.

So often have total eclipses been seen as omens that it’s tempting to imagine that the heavens are bringing midday darkness this year as a warning to the people of our troubled world. Just open the newspaper. But such ideas stem from a comically inflated view of the role of human endeavors and tribulations on the stage of cosmic events.

We can only hope that the awe inspired by the eclipse will indeed have some salutary effect on its watchers. The nineteenth-century writer Mabel Loomis Todd observed after taking in an eclipse, “An assembled crowd is awed into absolute silence. Trivial chatter and senseless joking cease.” When the sun reappeared, her group of friends, gathered to watch the phenomenon, “breathed one mighty sigh, as from a universal heart just relieved of tension near to breaking. Then some one spoke, and so we faced common life again.”