I was following the news of the upcoming solar eclipse with half interest. At first I assumed that New Brunswick would prove to be too far north or south, or too cloudy but as my attention focused I noticed that the swath of the moon’s shadow seemed to hit the town of Shediac, a coastal town only an hour north.

On the day of the eclipse I was still unsure of my plans but as I finished a task in Sackville I impulsively decided to hit the highway. The roads were clear, the tunes were on. I was going to track down totality on my own.

My husband was at home going for his daily walk during the eclipse. I had considered the passive eclipse experience and I think that choice has real merit. Just stay where you are, stop and breathe. Take note of your surroundings if you want, feel your feelings.

We could have shared the experience, chatting, joking, probably missing the whole thing. The experience would have been reduced, due to our location, to a semi shading of the sun. There would be no crowds and this would suit my good tempered but rebellious hermit of a husband.

I was not looking for a crowd with which to share the experience, but I wanted more. I wanted totality. I was so close to achieving totality, if that is a thing you can say with any dignity, that I decided I had to try. And I thought that, maybe, by being alone I would be more open to an emotional or spiritual experience.

So I drove. The traffic was moving smoothly but there were many more cars on the road than unusual. I was joining the masses of humanity looking for a personal moment.

As 2:20 pm struck people began to pull off the highway and set themselves up on the grass, their lawn chairs out and eclipse glasses propped on their noses. I kept on going.

At one point the highway was as clogged and slow moving as a highway leaving downtown Toronto on a Friday night. But people kept peeling off the road and taking exits, so the road cleared and I kept sailing.

As the time drew closer I pulled into a truck stop where there were a few cars. I shared the huge truck highway pull off with a man from Saskatchewan, a small family, and one truck driver. We all turned off our vehicles and quietly trained our glasses on the sun. It was a collection of people who wanted to keep to themselves, and that was good.

I explored a muddy logging road and found a spot along a quiet trail where I could pee, dragging back an abandoned rocking chair, much to the surprise of the Saskatchewan man. The sun was high in the sky and seemed as bright as ever.

I took occasional peeks at the angry sun with my glasses and was surprised to see a small bite out of the sun, on the lower right side. Sitting in the afternoon sun I could not tell that the sun was changing in anyway. But once the shadow began to grow the sun seemed to spread out and whiten, as if the edges were indistinct.

I made my way back up the logging road, thick with mud. I could hear voices from the parking lot, and I could see, through the trees, a child running out to the back porch of a house hidden off the highway. I was listening for birds but I could only hear a distant bird and the roar of people still driving along the highway. They didn’t stop, they had to be somewhere?

I peeked at the sun again with the glasses. It felt dangerous to look right into the sun. I glanced but did not stare. Every time I looked I found the sun slowly decreasing in size until it was a crescent.

At this point I was actively talking to myself. Oh, look at that, look at that, I said to myself. Then the colour of the world drained out. Everything became two dimensional. The path below my feet was grey and shadowed, like a photo of the moon’s surface.

I could hear a man announcing from his back porch that it was just the same as the sun going down. He was insisting it wasn’t a powerful moment, to calm himself. He was trying to normalize the experience of the colours draining suddenly from the landscape.

I paced along the darkened path wondering how dark it would get, feeling disquieted. Suddenly a murder of crows began calling back and forth to each other. I tried looking for the sun with the eclipse glasses but my view was of pure black nothingness.

I could feel a cold bright light shining down so I looked up at the branches of the trees and and saw swirling white clouds obscuring the sky where it had been clear just before. Then suddenly I saw an angry eye, a terrifying vision.

An angry black hole surrounded by a red ring of fire. I looked away immediately, suddenly shocked that I didn’t have the eclipse glasses on. I will never forget the red ring of fire surrounding the deep black hole. It was more than unsettling, it was deeply frightening. It felt ominous and angry.

All the social posts about the eclipse had alluded to the old days when people were frightened by this vision. The idea, I suppose, is that we are now too civilized and sophisticated to be frightened by the sun being blocked out by a dark shadow.

But why would we not still be frightened? Can any of the scientists that are trying to change the climate by seeding clouds, the scientists that think they can trick our immune systems, can these arrogant people stop the movement of the planets? Can they stop the movement of the universe? No, they cannot.

I am not a religious person, I cannot bring myself to believe in Jesus, but the only way I can describe my emotional reaction to the ring of fire is to say, I felt the wrath. It felt like somebody up there is very angry and I felt like a scared child.

It felt like a warning: Live on the earth quietly, be kind and good, and be grateful. On the drive home I felt waves of discomfort and little bits of anxiety. I felt drained but I had made my choice to explore all by myself, so I had to accept it.

In the end, I will be alone. In the end we are alone, so it is best to test how that feels once in a while. But I was sure happy to know that I could return that night to my grounding husband and our good, quiet life enjoying our time on this earth.