I took a miniature tour of the south to see the solar eclipse, exploring Savannah before situating myself under the path of totalilty in Charleston. There, for a little less than two minutes and despite worrisome cloud cover, I witnessed the moon block out the sun.
Spoiler alert: I didn’t have an Annie-Dillard-style religious experience.
I’m not certain I was expecting to. Her description of the eclipse as terrifying and sublime, though goosebump-raising, had seemed outlandish to me. (I wonder how much of this is my being raised in the digital age, where magic has become practically ordinary. I wonder if we’re doing away with wonder.)
But nevertheless, there it was: the star that supports our whole planet, blotted out; the tiny corona of our survival. The people who’d gathered on the lawn at Charles Towne Landing whooped, cheered, applauded. We all took off our flimsy blackout glasses and looked up and out, for once, instead of down and inward.
The storm rolling in obscured the weirdness of the sudden dip in temperature and light, but I still saw a star or two at 2:46 in the afternoon.
In other words: I’m glad I went, and I’ll probably try to catch one or two more before my ride on this astral merry-go-round is over.
A young man does yoga on the beach in the pre-dawn light on Tybee Island, Georgia — child’s pose, facing away from the sun.
Misplaced gravestones pinned to the back wall of Colonial Park Cemetery in Savannah. Many were damaged and vandalized when the Union Army camped here during the Civil War. According to Daniel, my walking tour guide, some estimated 7,000 corpses lie here — although you can only find about 600 headstones.
Daniel, of Free Savannah Tours (take one!) gesticulating in Chippewa Square — which, yes, is where the famous “box of chocolates” scene from Forrest Gump was shot. These squares were designed, in part, as fire breaks, but they work as people breaks, too – the heat and the humidity and the ample seating conspire to make you dally a while. The city makes you slow down.
A tour of Flannery O’Connor’s childhood home — which I hadn’t even known was in Savannah (bad lit major!) and only accidentally happened upon — includes this grade school report card. She was terrible at spelling. She also, apparently, had a moonwalking chicken and made her friends listen to her read from Grimm’s Fairy Tales and her own creations while seated in the ersatz auditorium that was her pillow-strewn bathtub.
One of O’Connor’s childhood books, in which she’s inscribed, at the estimated age of eight: “Not a very good book.” Jo, the docent, so obviously and wonderfully geeky, totally entranced with O’Connor’s story. “It just gives me chills to think she once held these books in her hands,” she said.
A southern belle clomps her way through Savannah’s touristy River Street district in ruffles, lace and high-heeled boots, humidity be damned.
Forsyth Park, Savannah, Georgia
Locals congregate to purchase fresh produce, meat, and dairy — and breakfast on handmade popsicles — at the Forsyth Farmer’s Market on Saturday morning.
An open window on one of the landings inside the Tybee Island Lighthouse.
Fair warning. Taken at Tybee Island Light Station and Museum.
GPOY. I am nothing like a lighthouse.
A couple relaxes alongside the historic trail at Charles Towne Landing a few hours before the eclipse.