NEWS
BY CORINNE BOYER
BLACK
HOLE SUN
Salem experiences
totality as solar eclipse
travels across U.S.
A
t 9 am on Aug. 21, Salem’s downtown streets were sparsely populated with
cars and people. As the moon slowly began to cover the sun, people who were
stopped in parking lots and sitting on sidewalks gazed toward the sky.
Doug Filipenko traveled from Vancouver, British Columbia, and stayed in
Portland for the weekend. He arrived in Salem around 5 am. Filipenko says he
witnessed a solar eclipse as a kid during the ’60s. “It’s a beautiful city — this is the closest
we could get to totality.”
An employee of a Wells Fargo branch opened the door with glasses in hand, checking
on the status of the moon’s shadow moving across the sun.
The lawn surrounding the capitol building was dotted with lawn chairs and blankets.
Charles Martey took the day off from work and drove from Happy Valley. He saw a total
solar eclipse in Ghana in 2005 while he was in college. “That was my first time. I hadn’t
seen anything like that — I just read about it in books, so seeing it for the first time was
amazing … so yeah, I was actually really excited to know that it was happening today.”
Martey says he witnessed birds growing confused as the morning sky went dark. “It was
really cool. Many of the birds all kind of flew back down because apparently they use the
light to determine their bedtime, so they felt like it was their sleep time — they all came
down. And right when the light came back on they all went back,” he says.
Martey adds that he came to see his second eclipse “to be a part of history.”
Hundreds, maybe thousands, of people were camped out on the capitol’s state park
lawn. At about 10:13 am, the moon left a thumbnail-sized sliver of the sun and the light
created a surreal glowing effect across the crowds. People were illuminated with a golden
rose-colored light differing from the golden light created by a sunset, a light that appeared
to be a combination of sunrise and sunset — a brilliance that can only be recreated by an
alignment of the moon positioned between the sun and the Earth.
An announcer on the capitol steps told the crowd that the weather will feel like spring
instead of summer once the sun was completely covered.
And as that light grew brilliant and then dimmer, people began to cheer, whistle and vo-
calize their amazement. All at once, we threw off our glasses and looked at the blazing sun
blocked by the moon. The sky was mostly dark, but it looked like dusk along the horizon.
A dog lay on the park steps gazing out into the crowd unfazed by the loud cheering and
disappearance of the sun. Red beams developed around the rim of the moon, and excite-
ment and awe grew on the faces of the watchers.
When the moon gave way to the sun, the announcer instructed everyone to put their
glasses back on. The sky grew lighter again, and people began to leave.
Tristan Wylde-Larue, a student at Reed College in Portland, was beside himself. “It was
probably the coolest thing I’ve ever seen,” he says. “I didn’t have the highest of expecta-
tions, but I would definitely drive 12 hours to see that. It was worth it.”
Romeo Le traveled from Las Vegas and met a group of friends in Seattle before driv-
ing down to Salem at 2 am. Le saw a partial eclipse in Sacramento when he was younger.
“Nothing like when it was totality,” he says. “It was awesome. Everyone here has been
amazingly friendly, so it made the experience a lot better.”
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eugeneweekly.com • A ugust 24, 2017
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