When I woke up on Monday — eclipse day — it was drizzling and cloudy. But by late morning, I had hope: the clouds were thin and sunlight brightened the wet green grass. The day was turning, and it was beautiful.

We\’d planned for Molly\’s sister Rebecca and her husband Tim to come over. Molly made \”Eclipse Focaccia,\” which was regular focaccia but with slices of red onion placed in a gradient — full circle, half-circle, crescent — and whole black olives to represent the moon. I made an eclipse cocktail, which had dark cherry juice on the bottom and a fizzy lemon-soda-vodka mix on top — garnished of course with a full round lemon slice to symbolize the sun.

We sat by the pond in lawn chairs as we had for the partial eclipse in 2017. The day had warmed nicely. Rebecca brought a digital thermometer and in the sun it was 79 degrees. We put on our glasses — the sun was already bitten by the moon — the missing chunk on the sun\’s right side looked alarming through eclipse glasses, though you didn\’t notice a thing if you looked around at the landscape without them.

Once the sun was about halfway obscured the light changed — we got weird shadows, and everything looked darker. It got colder, too: Rebecca\’s thermometer registered about 70. The birds (mostly red-winged blackbirds, but also the northern flicker) got louder, it seemed. Harvey, our rooster, crowed.

We were just outside the path of totality — we had a 99.5 percent eclipse. At our maximum, the sky was dark — though I could see the sky was darker just to the north, where totality was. It looked like a storm brewing. Birds got quieter, though not completely quiet. Spring peepers started chirping. I was cold — I put on the fleece I had brought out with me. Rebecca\’s thermometer said 61 now, and there was a breeze. There was orange on the western horizon like a sunset. In the dark we could see Venus glittering like a star underneath the sun.

As the sky began to brighten again I heard a wood thrush singing. Wood thrushes typically sing at sunrise and sunset; I wonder which he thought it was? I\’m so cold, I said — the temperature didn\’t start to recover until the sun was more than halfway visible again. I wished I had brought a knit hat out with me. Through our eclipse glasses we watched the dark crescent on the sun shrink and shrink and shrink, becoming impossibly small. Finally the sun seemed fully round again. The eclipse was over. I peeled off my fleece — I was hot again in the full sunshine.

It was a good, quiet day. I didn\’t fuss with my telephoto lens or the solar filter on my camera like I had in 2017. I just sat and soaked it in. On this land, my home, this will be the last (nearly) total eclipse of my lifetime. I wished it had lasted longer. I want to go back, to feel it again.