It was exciting to find that the path of April’s solar eclipse ran through the Midwest. This was cool, except that the Midwest is charmingly green and fresh in April because it typically rains a lot in April. Cloudy weather, at the least, was to be expected. We only had to go as far as Toledo, a 45 minute drive, to see totality, so we wouldn’t need to set out before we had a weather report. The University of Toledo had a football stadium called The Glass Bowl – Toledo is the Glass Capital of the World – with free entry and a large, free parking lot. And bathrooms. Doug and I set out with our friends Bob and Sue, a picnic lunch, and folding chairs, and sailed right into traffic. But we anticipated that, so even with the ridiculous two and a half hours it took to get there, we were in plenty of time.

We parked at the stadium, unfolded our chairs, and set up our tailgate. A reporter from the Detroit News came, took our picture, and asked where we were from. Ann Arbor, we said. What made us come “to the University of Toledo, of all places” to see the eclipse? We told him – bathrooms and free parking – but he must have found people with better stories because he didn’t use ours. I noticed that the UT Rockets’ team colors were blue and gold. Perfect!

The clouds were thin. We ate our sandwiches and nibbled grapes, mandarins, and trail mix, looking up now and then through our eclipse glasses. Inside the stadium they had rock music and an announcer, which we could hear, but weren’t really listening. Until we heard him announce that it was six minutes to totality, and be sure to wear our glasses as long as we could see even a sliver of the disc of the sun. Now we turned completely toward the sun, glasses in place.

The shadow would be coming from the west and we didn’t have much of a view in that direction, so what we clearly saw was not the shadow on the ground, like last time, but what’s been called the Column of Doom. If you didn’t know what caused the eclipse it would be extremely frightening: heavy, dark, chilling, yet clearly not a thunderstorm, more like a shroud carried by some very determined spirit left unappeased.

The announcer went into his play-by-play: “The moon’s shadow has now crossed the border into Ohio State. Five minutes to totality.”  More music; then “The moon’s shadow has just crossed Dayton. Three minutes to totality.” Through our glasses we saw the disc of the sun become a child’s drawing of a sickle moon – then a fingernail paring – then a tiny, tiny sliver, a smiley-face frown.

From the stadium, the announcer said “ we are going to stop talking and stop playing music when totality arrives, so that everyone can appreciate it in their own way. We’ll talk again when totality is over. You can take off your glasses for totality, but be sure to put them back on as soon as the smallest bit of sun returns.”

And then it was quiet. It got cold. It was dark. Birds chirped and nested in the nearby trees. The last sliver of sun succumbed to the moon’s shadow and we took off our glasses. There was the diamond ring, a brilliant, one-sided flash the clouds did not conceal, and then even the diamond ring disappeared and suddenly – so suddenly – the sun was a hole in the sky, pitch black, and a big corona danced around its perimeter. It was startling, how suddenly the corona leaped out at us. Where had it been all this time? How weird that it was always there and we could never tell – never, because even the smallest sliver of sun was too much for it, overpowered it. But now there it was – not showing up for our cameras, but perfectly plain to our bare eyes – a crown of flames; a circle of crazy lightning bolts, a nuclear lei, glorious. The moment it appeared, a cheer went up from the stadium. This was just what happened at totality in the eclipse of 2017: a spontaneous cheer! Hurray for the cosmos, which does not disappoint. Hurray for knowledge leading to reliable predictions, hurray for something to trust, hurray for the universe delivering beauty no matter how much we down here mess up. Hurray for good news. Hurray for something we can agree on: that it takes our breath away. Hurray for the shared experience and not carping that our awareness of it was provided by – oh yes – elites. Hurray for forgetting ourselves for these two minutes, and talking part in something bigger.

Then the diamond appeared on the opposite side of the ring, and the announcer returned. “Totality is over,” he said. “Put your glasses back on.” The lyrics of the music he chose said “Everything’s gonna be alright.”

We packed up the car and joined the crowd streaming home, strangely tired considering all we did was sit while the moon did all the work. Elation, exuberance, and amazement can really tire you out. Once again, Doug was right: there is nothing like an eclipse.