The couple of hours after the eclipse were pretty hazy. The come down from totality dominated most of the afternoon. In the first few minutes after totality, I listened to the wildlife slowly return to an abbreviated afternoon schedule. I noticed the lizards were very quick to return to the rocks to try and rewarm themselves - perhaps some never even left, instead choosing to bask in the residual heat from the rock during totality. I must have spotted seven or eight lizards sitting on the rocks near me.
At this point, I was eager to leave, as the mid-afternoon heat was beginning to return with a vengeance. I was also running a little low on water. I cut short my time-lapse a little early, packed up, and began to hoof it back to the car. If I thought the trip in was rough, I wasn't thinking about the trip back out. The temperature had returned to the low 90s, and the humidity really hadn't gone anywhere throughout the entire experience. It took nearly an hour to haul everything back to the swimming hole. At this point the college students I had met in the morning were packing up, and one offered to carry the folding chair for me. After divvying up our load, we started back up towards the parking lot as a group. We talked about the eclipse, and apparently the shadow bands had been spectacular at the swimming hole, with the bands rolling up and down the cliff both before and after the eclipse.
After a strenous 20 minute uphill walk, we finally made it back to the parking lot. At this point I was exhausted and out of water - probably very close to the point of heat exhaustion. I slumped into the car and put the A/C on full blast - a welcome feeling after sitting outdoors through most of a brutally hot day. At this point, I decided I would drive up to Harrisburg, which probably had the nearest gas station. Once I made it there I hopped out and got some powerade and potato chips. I chatted with the clerks for a bit about the eclipse, although they were a little blase about it.
As I drove back towards Carbondale to meet my parents for dinner, I ran into brief traffic near I-57 in Marion. I was thankful I didn't need to take the interstate north, since the northbound lane was completely bogged down. The eastbound lane of Highway 13 coming into Marion was also the busiest I've ever seen it, with standstill bumper-to-bumper traffic leading five miles or so out of town. I wondered where all these people had been, since the area hadn't seemed that much busier than normal. But I made it home without much of a hitch before going out to dinner. The thunderstorms that had been threatening to the south had exploded, treating us to a spectacular sunset display.
After a heavy barbeque dinner that hit the spot after a day of light snacking, I called it a day and got ready for the long drive back to LI the next day. As much as I would have liked to say I dreamed about fulfilling a lifelong dream that night, I was so exhausted that I fell into a deep dreamless sleep until my alarm clock went off the next morning. But I was electric about having seen the eclipse for months afterwards.
Seeing the 2017 eclipse was a special experience, and even now writing this recollection three years later, I still get shivers of excitement and feel the same ethereal energy from the event when I think back to it., and I'm already looking forward to 2024, when the next eclipse crosses the US. As much as I would like to see the 2024 eclipse from southern Illinois, I don't feel the same need to return home for this one. I feel like the emotional connection between the skies and the land where I grew up is already cemented. Besides, the April weather is rarely good in the Midwestern spring. So I think I will hit the open range of south Texas, where the weather is much more likely to play nice. But where ever it will be, I'm not sure that it will have the same power as it did in 2017.
Written: May 28, 2020
Edited: August 14, 2021