by Rosalyn Eves
After a moment, one of the men in the scientific party catches sight of us and clambers across the boulders toward us. The man is middle-aged with a curly beard and muscular frame, wearing some kind of uniform. He’s rather red-faced by the time he draws close, muttering something under his breath.
“Damn it, I thought I’d made it clear that no civilians were to be allowed on the summit.”
I’m nearly positive he meant for us to hear that. I glance over at the clearly civilian group, just now enjoying their breakfast.
The man follows my gaze. He haws a bit, then says, “That party is here as my guests. I’m General Albert Myer, US Signal Corps, and head of this operation.”
I drop a curtsy, trying to hide my dismay. Of all the rotten luck, to make it all the way to the summit only to run into yet another obstacle. “I’m Miss Elizabeth Bertelsen, of Monroe, Utah.”
Beside me, Alice and Will introduce themselves as well. Daniela doesn’t say much, just watches. General Myer stares at us for a moment, then says, “Well, now you’ve seen the summit. You can head on back down the mountain. I don’t care where you stop, so long as it’s not here.”
I straighten my back. “General Myer, I was told that one of your men was taken sick and that you’re shorthanded just now for the eclipse viewing. I’ve come to help.”
He squints at me. “Who told you that?”
“One of Professor Young’s students.”
He sighs and rubs his beard. “Well, it’s true enough. Dr. Abbe came down with that blasted altitude sickness. Fool man could hardly see for pain but was determined to stay up here. I sent him down the mountain.” He peers more closely at Will. “Here, now, you don’t look so good either.”
Will, drawn but game, says, “A good soldier doesn’t desert his post, sir. I won’t desert my sister either.”
“Good man.” General Myer nods approvingly. He turns back to me. “You know anything about telescopes and eclipses?”
“Only a little about telescopes,” I say honestly, “but a fair bit about astronomy and eclipses. I know how to sketch the corona anyway, and about timing the eclipse.”
“Then tell me, what causes the eclipse?”
“The moon’s orbit coming between us and the sun at just the right position—the moon’s shadow falling on earth blocks out the light of the sun.”
“And what is it we’re looking for?”
I smile a little, remembering Professor Colbert’s lecture. “The shape of the corona. Possibly the presence of the planet Vulcan.”
General Myer grunts, which I take as approval. “And the rest of you?”
“I’m an artist,” Alice says. “I mean to make sketches of the eclipse, and the view from the peak during it, and paint it later.”
“I’m her assistant,” Will says, pointing at Alice.
Daniela says, “I’m the guide. I think you know my father.” With her head, she indicates a wiry, dark-haired man picking his way across the rocks from the tourist party.
The general brightens. “Ah, Navarro! Yes, I know him.” He tugs at his beard a moment in thought, then says, “Well, I suppose you can all stay, provided you make yourselves useful. I’d like a copy of your sketches, Miss Stevens, after the eclipse. You can send them care of the US Signal Corps in Washington, DC.”
Alice curtsies again. “Of course, sir.”
Daniela leaves us to go talk to her father, who gives her a tight hug. General Myer stumps off, then turns around after a few paces and asks, “Well, are you coming?”
We scramble after him. Daniela, her mission to guide us to the peak accomplished, stays with her father.
General Myer introduces us to a pair of men who work for the Signal Corps, and to Professor Samuel Langley, of the Allegheny Observatory. A middle-aged man with a dark beard beginning to gray, he’s the owner of the large telescope.
The mention of Samuel makes me think of a very different Samuel, and I blush a little as I take Professor Langley’s hand.
“Miss Bertelsen says she knows some astronomy,” General Myer says.
“Capital!” Professor Langley says, smiling. “I’m sure we can find work for you to do, though it may not be the most exciting of work.”
I tell him what I told General Myer, that I know how to sketch the corona, and add, “I’m willing to do anything you need, though I’m afraid I don’t have much formal training.”
“My friend Miss Mitchell claims that women make the best astronomers, because of their eye for detail. And while a good astronomer needs training, we can show you what we need. Hey, John!” he calls out, and a youngish man with glasses ambles over to us. “My brother, John,” Mr. Langley says. “He’s a medical doctor and professor at the University of Michigan, which has begun admitting women students and has a fine astronomy department besides.”
Dr. John Langley peers at me. “Are you interested in astronomy?”
I nod, not quite trusting myself to speak. A sudden, wild hope is blooming in me.
Dr. Langley continues, “I’m a chemist, not an astronomer. But I do know Mr. Watson a bit, who’s in that department—he’s out in Wyoming just now, for this same eclipse. It’s a good school and not terribly expensive. Twenty-five dollars to register, if you are not a resident of Michigan, and another twenty-five for incidental fees.”
School has always seemed so out of reach because I could not imagine how to make it happen. But here, now, on the summit of Pikes Peak just before a total solar eclipse, so many things seem possible. I can write to the schools for admissions information, take classes at the Brigham Young Academy in Provo to learn whatever subjects I might be lacking. I can work to pay for my own schooling. Fifty dollars is a huge sum, but not an impossible one.
“Thank you,” I say, and mean it.
For the rest of the morning, the Langley brothers put us to work carrying equipment, explaining what each is meant to do, positioning things just so, and then repositioning them when sudden gusts of wind scour over the peak. I do my best to ignore the headache still pounding dully at my temples and watch the cloudy sky.
Alice prowls around the summit, looking for the perfect spot to observe the valley. Will mostly lies down on a large boulder.
“I’m conserving my strength,” he says, trying to smile.
“You do it quite well,” I tell him, and he laughs.
Professor Samuel Langley explains the procedure for the eclipse: General Myer will observe through the telescope left behind by Mr. Abbe, looking for signs of the planet Vulcan. Dr. John Langley will attempt to measure the brightness of the corona through a photometer he’s improvised. Another of the Signal Corps officers will man the second telescope, a large, bronze thing that was covered in lard to protect it on the way up the mountain. The grease has now been wiped away, and it gleams in the dim light. A third Signal Corps officer will measure temperature and radiation using Professor Langley’s newly invented bolometer, and a fourth will monitor the spectroscope readings. The array of complicated instruments—most of which I have never seen before—is both exciting and daunting. It represents the height of scientific progress, but it also reminds me of the extent of my ignorance.
Will volunteers to time the eclipse, and Samuel Langley and I are to sketch the corona, the same work I would have done in Denver, for Professor Colbert. But somehow it feels more important here—perhaps because Professor Langley is doing the same, when he might have done any of the more technical work.
The scientists around us check and recheck their coordinates, adjusting the telescopes and their instruments. General Myer passes out blue-tinted glass, said to be more effective than the smoked glass sold on the streets in Denver. The sky overhead is still dark with clouds, the valley mottled in shadows and far-off sunlight. Professor Langley watches the sky and mutters something that sounds like an expletive. I whisper a prayer.
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Around noon, Alice brings some fruit and sandwiches out from her bag, but I can’t eat. My stomach is too knotted up and my head still aches with the altitude change. Will struggles upright and manages a few bites.
A wind picks up, screaming across the summit and requiring both Langleys to hold fast to the telescope and readjust its position. The cold air sears through me, and I pull my coat tighter about me.
The wind stirs the clouds overhead. Sluggishly, they break apart, revealing blue sky.
I’ve never seen such blue, like every perfect fall day rolled into one. A ragged cheer breaks from our group as the clouds sift away, torn gray banners waving defeat across the sky.
Holding up our blue glass, we study the sky and valley with renewed energy for any sign of the eclipse.
At 2:22 p.m., Dr. John Langley breaks away from a telescope to shout, “Here it comes!” He allows each of us to peer through the telescope to see the sliver of sun blocked by the advancing edge of the moon.
The eclipse is starting.
I want to laugh and cry at once, my whole body filled with a well of elation.
As the sun moves across the sky, the moon slides into position, blotting out a quarter of the sun, then half.
Alice begins sketching, blacking in the shape of the moon on the sun, using watercolors to brush in the general shades and shadows. She draws first one angle of the valley, then another, working so quickly that sometimes her colors bleed together.
Around us, the shadows sharpen. Professor Samuel Langley explains that this is because when the sun shines normally, it’s so wide in the sky that the rays of light arrive at different angles and make the edges of the shadow blurry. Now there are not so many angles, and everything appears crisper.
The shadows shift too. Where the sunlight falls through holes in the rock, the shadows adopt the appearance of an oblong, then a wide crescent, reflecting the changing shape of the sun. Everything darkens, taking on a curious orange cast.
The sun’s light is thin and ghastly, and all the color seems to leach from the peak. In contrast, pigments flare along the horizon: fire-red and gold.
A hundred miles away, snow-capped peaks burn white in the sunlight. Then darkness falls over the mountains as if someone has dropped a curtain.
The scientists around me flurry in action, recording measurements, checking their instruments one final time.
I look out across the valley and gasp.
A vast wall of darkness, surrounded by colors ranging from yellow to red-orange to purple, speeds across the plains below. The moon’s shadow, miles wide, sliding over valleys and ridges, devouring the light as it roars toward us.
We’re nearly to totality now, an eerie grayness suffusing everything. Strange bands of light and shadow ripple across the rocks around me, like the sun filtering through clear water at the edge of a lake. Above, the sun is only the thinnest strand of brightness.
At 3:31 p.m. the sun winks out. General Myer calls out the time.
A final, brilliant string, like so many gold beads on a thread, spans out from the edge of the masked sun. Then even that disappears, and it’s only the eclipse: a dark disk where the sun stood, surrounded by the narrow band of radiance that marks the corona, extraordinary streamers several times the width of the sun extending from the black circle like white wings.
Professor Samuel Langley plucks up paper and a pencil and begins sketching furiously; his brother inspects the photometer and scribbles something down. General Myer peers through the telescope and begins declaiming his observations.
As my eyes grow used to the darkness, stars emerge in the sky around the sun—stars that are always there but hidden by the sun’s glow.
A thousand points of light, touched by the spreading solar streamers, each one connected somehow to the nerves in my skin, so that my whole body feels suffused with light.
Tears prick my eyes. I feel as I do when the Holy Spirit touches me, as though I stand before the altar of heaven, and only the thinnest of veils separates me from the face of God. I feel at once whole and insignificant, both found and lost before the immensity of space.
A total eclipse of the sun.
It’s beautiful and terrifying and I think my heart may already be broken trying to hold all of this singular moment.
“Thirty seconds!” Will shouts.
I shake myself out of my stupor. I’ve already lost thirty precious seconds of work.
But my fingers don’t obey my silent command to pick up my pencil.
The pounding in my head grows. Acid burns in the back of my throat.
This is my one shot at capturing the eclipse—and I’m already failing.
Rachel’s white face flashes through my mind, followed by the elk charging beside the tracks. This is what I do in the face of urgency: I freeze.
No.
I can work under pressure. Think of Rebekka’s labor, of Ida’s birth.
I can do this.
I pick up my own pad and begin sketching, moving slowly to quell the trembling in my hand. The coronal light—a soft, glowing halo around the sun—stretches multiple times the width of the sun. The streamers extending at forty-five-degree angles are longer on one side than the other, and I skip my pencil across the paper, trying to capture everything.
Energy surges through me. I think of the scientists on the peak, of Edison and Dr. Morton and the others in Rawlins, of other scientists scattered across the length of totality. Once, I thought of science as something that happened only in distant laboratories, in faraway cities. But scientific discovery isn’t limited to those spaces—it’s happening right here, right now, in the very mountains of the West that are my home.
And I am part of it.
Samuel Langley looks up briefly from his sketch. “This atmosphere offers extraordinary clarity. Just look at those streamers! Easily twelve times the length of the sun. Must be ten million miles. Maybe more.”
Ten million miles! And yet the streamers only occupy a small part of the sky. The scientific part of me marvels at the way distance skews our sense of proportion. The rest of me thrills at the vastness of the created universe.
“One minute,” Will calls out. I glance at him. He still looks ghastly, but he’s gamely propped up against a rock, a fine pocket watch in his hand.
I’ve caught less than half of the corona, the radiant light that surrounds the dark circle where the moon blocks the sun’s light. I push my hand to move faster, my pencil racing across the page.
“Two minutes!” Will shouts.
I’ve captured three-quarters of the corona now. Samuel Langley abandons his finished sketch and elbows the Signal Corps man away from his telescope to catch the last of totality.
“Over!” Professor Langley says. “Will, what’s our time?”
“One hundred sixty-one seconds,” Will says. “Nearly three minutes.”
I scramble to sketch the last bit of the corona. It doesn’t disappear at once, as the sun begins to peek out from behind the moon, but fades in degrees—first, the long outer streamers, then the brilliance nearest the sun. And then the sun emerges, the unnatural daytime darkness dissipating before the growing light.
I sag back against my perch, grinning foolishly at the world.
Everyone chatters, sharing observations and speculations. I wish Samuel was here, to share this moment. Neither General Myer nor Professor Langley spotted Vulcan, but “I’ll bet James Watson has something to say about it,” Professor Langley says. “He’s got the most at stake in this theory.”
The rush of the eclipse fades and I have the curious feeling of returning to our world from another one, of passing through some kind of veil as color returns. I set my sketch down and wander over to Alice, who has also drawn the corona, but mostly only as an idea in the sky, overlooking an eerie gray-washed valley. Even as a
rough sketch, her work has a raw power.
Will drops his watch back into his pocket and sways as he tries to stand. Alice and I exchange glances, then Alice moves to support her brother and helps him back to his seat.
He tries, feebly, to push her away. “I can stand. I don’t need help.”
“I know you don’t,” she says. “But it’s all right to accept help sometimes. It doesn’t make you weak. You’re probably stronger than anyone here—none of the rest of us had to work through such severe altitude sickness as you have.”
Will grins at her, but the smile slides off his face after a moment.
“Elizabeth, help me pack up,” Alice says. “Then we’ll head down the mountain.”
We collect Alice’s gear, and I pass my drawing to Professor Langley. “You’ve a good eye for this,” he says, inspecting it. “I hope you’ll consider my brother’s idea of studying at the University of Michigan.”
“I will,” I say.
For so long I have seen my life as a question of faith or science, as though choosing one meant abandoning the other.
But I’ve just seen the moon and the sun in the sky at once, and things I have thought impossible are beginning to seem possible. Whether Michigan or Vassar, the eclipse has confirmed for me that this is part of the life I want.
But perhaps not the whole part. Miss Mitchell’s question still haunts me: If you do not bring all of yourself to your work, what do you bring instead?
In the Denver library, I found a book that described old alchemical texts, where the eclipse symbolized an alchemical marriage, the union of both sun and moon. For those alchemists, the sun and moon weren’t adversarial—in their highest form, they were complementary.
I’ve felt lifted by religious faith and prodded by scientific questions, and I don’t know if I can sift through my life and pinpoint the moment where they diverge. Maybe they don’t diverge at all—maybe they’re part of the same vast system, but I don’t see all the connections yet.
Maybe I have been looking at everything wrong, seeing “or” where I should have seen “and.”
When I watched the eclipse today, I wasn’t a woman of faith or a woman of science.
