Monday 8 April 2024--Lac Memphrémagog is a slender body of water 25 miles long, with the town of Newport, Vermont at its southern end, and Magog, Québec in the north. It was reputedly a favored smuggling corridor during Prohibition. I've pegged the lakeshore park, with its unobstructed view southwest, as an ideal spot for viewing the eclipse. So have several thousand other people, and by midday there is an agreeably laid-back party atmosphere. As promised, the afternoon sky is cloudless, but for a few wisps.

Totality arrives at 3:27:21pm and lasts for three minutes and twenty-nine seconds. I don't know what to say about it...the one word that comes to mind is unreal. There's a dead-black disk in the sapphire sky, an impossible hole that is nothing like the sun, save that it's round and wears a crown of fire. It's dark--the streetlights come on--but it's not like night; the horizon is bright in all directions. I take a few photos, but decided beforehand not to let the camera distract me. Just soak it in. There will be countless photos in the media, better than I can take. I do shoot some video as totality arrives, and again as it departs, but I'm not really paying attention to it. I'm just hoping for some crowd reaction. [The results are posted below. They're predictably bad as video, but the transitions from light to darkness and back are more dramatic than expected. The black disk of the moon doesn't show up, washed out in the camera by the light of the corona, but Venus is plainly visible. I still get goosebumps.]

We have dinner at Des Cantons again. I've been wondering if I'll feel a post-event letdown, maybe a bit of anti-climax. I don't. I get why some people chase these things all over the world--that three and a half minutes could certainly be addictive. But I won't see another. The one was worth waiting a lifetime for.