Totality at Lake Ozonia

My road to the Great American Eclipse began in Atlanta in 2023, when I met a salesman from American Paper Optics at a trade show. He gave me a stack of free eclipse glasses. “There’s a big eclipse coming in 2024,” he explained. “You should order eclipse glasses now.”

I ordered 2,000 pairs. About six months later, I ordered again… and again. Late last week we finally sold out. The final count: 19,000 pairs sold between all four stores. Knowing how much to order had been threading the needle— we didn’t want a bunch left over, with no eclipse happening in the lower 48 until 2044.

When eclipse day finally arrived, I was far away from the office— after all that anticipation, I intended to see the full eclipse, even though my home in Lancaster County was about 5 hours from the path of totality.

First, I planned to travel with my sister Brenda’s family to an eclipse viewing event in Canandaigua, New York. But a funeral changed Brenda’s family’s plans, and so Mom decided to come with me. Dad opted to stay at home, saying he had to work. My uncle John, Mom’s brother, and his family were planning a road trip to New York too.

Mom and I drove to Seneca Falls, NY, on Sunday to spend the night at my Aunt Mattie’s house, about 45 minutes from Canandaigua.

Meanwhile, John checked weather reports and decided to aim for further east, since overcast skies were predicted for Canandaigua. He and his kids started driving early Monday morning with a “Totality or Bust!” sign in the back of their minivan.

I convinced Mom we should head for the Adirondacks region as well. I knew every mile we drove north we would have to drive south too, and that the traffic was supposed to be ridiculous, and that we might not beat the clouds, “But another solar eclipse won’t come for another twenty years….”

“Okay,” said Mom. “I’ll go with you this time!”

By mid-morning, we were driving up Route 11 near Canada. Spring hadn’t arrived yet in the bare farmland of upstate New York. We saw many Amish farms.

We were going up through Totality Country, but traffic was light. We had expected crammed roads and thought we might have to watch the eclipse from a parking lot, but instead we easily reached Adirondack Park, which seemed like as good a place as any.

Inside the park, snow still covered the forest floor. We saw a grove of maple trees and stopped to buy maple syrup for Dad.

After we entered the park, we lost contact with John’s contingent, but that was okay. We live just down the road from each other and can see them anytime.

The skies in the park weren’t completely clear, but the clouds were mostly cirrus, the high feathery clouds that don’t block the sun as much.

We followed Google maps to Lake Ozonia, a 400-acre lake surrounded by fir trees and empty summer homes. It would be the perfect setting for a mystery novel.

It might have been a little spooky if Mom and I had been alone, but we weren’t. Two women named Sherri and Donna arrived at the same time we did. “We’re here for the same reasons you are,” they announced, as they unloaded their chairs and snacks. “Are you believers? Good! We were singing praises to Lord the whole way here!”

We talked with Sherri and Donna and enjoyed warm sunshine as we waited. Two guys from Canada arrived in a truck and settled in to watch with us. A Florida woman staying across the lake came with her sons, who launched a canoe to see the eclipse from the water.

We watched the sun and kept checking the time.

The eclipse began at 2:12 p.m. I didn’t have a solar lens for my camera, but I had extra eclipse glasses (from those free samples at the show) so I tore one pair apart to make a makeshift solar lens.

As the moon crept in front of the sun, the sunlight dimmed, like darkness before a storm. I pulled my jacket on.

At 3:34 p.m., totality began. We wore our eclipse glasses until the sun disappeared and then removed them and marveled the sun’s corona, a perfect ring in the dark heavens. Stars appeared. Bats flew.

For about a minute, I took pictures. I used a zoom lens to capture the full eclipse, than switched to a regular lens to shoot landscape photos.

Then I put down my camera.

The crown glittered in the sky.

Then the sun peeked out, and light flooded the sky.

“The shortest night I ever had!” joked one of the Canadians. “I didn’t sleep all night!”

As the world returned to normal, we said good-bye to the people we will never see again and began driving the 400 miles home.

We traveled on Route 11 and Route 81. Some roads were empty… some were not. At a gas station, we talked with other eclipse travelers. One man said, “I was trucker in LA and I never saw traffic this bad.”

John and his family watched the eclipse near the Vermont border at a church named the Turnpike Wesleyan Church. At 11:38 p.m. he sent this text: “We left at 4 p.m. 7 hours later, at 11 pm, after we stopped about 1 hour for gas and to eat—WE’RE STILL NORTH OF ALBANY… it will perhaps be 4:30–5:00 am before we’re back… A small price to pay for the delightful totality.”

We got home at 2:30 a.m. Dad got up to meet us, saying he had been praying for us, worried about our safety.

We were exhausted but grateful. Every mile had been worth it to see the Great American Eclipse.