I took the day off on 8 April 2024 and rejected all offers for companionship for the eclipse. Instead, I hiked out into the middle of a swamp, sat in a pine grove, and had a good long think about many things from the time the eclipse started, until just after totality. For all of the talk about crazy amounts of people, I was alone the entire time. It was exactly what I needed.
I’ve also been watching Three-Body, the Chinese-produced series based on The Three Body Problem, by Cixin Liu.
Enough aligned that a consideration and encomium of smallness, parsimony, and gratitude was probably an almost inevitability. Watching red-winged blackbirds and swamp sparrows, hearing tree frogs, dawn and dusk chorales, and gunfire (shoot the moon?), picking pine needles and ticks out of my hair, and getting chilly were all excellent reminders though I am a self, that’s not much to brag about. Then the sun went out because the moon got in the way and Jupiter and Venus were there, like always, except I could see them.
On my way in, I’d picked up an 8 foot length of pine branch to use as a staff while I made my way through the swamp. Also, my knee isn’t what I used to be. On my way out, I went a different way, and had to scramble up a train trestle of stone and scree. I needed a bit more support, so I added a bent and oxidized railway spike to my other hand. With staff and dagger, on a day of fire and air, I climbed my way upwards, until I made it back to woods with trails. Another mile in I saw two young witches making their delicate way down a small ravine. They were so intent that they didn’t hear me, despite the bell on my backpack. I must have been a sight, all in black, covered in mud and cattail fluff with a long staff and a railroad spike.
I told them where an easier way back up could be found, and gave them my staff to help them on their own adventure. I find tools when they are offered, and try to give them away as freely. It’s as natural as an eclipse, or tree frogs singing when it gets dark outside.