Some things are worth missing school for. An eclipse road trip, and a search for wonder.

“I can’t wait for it to go dark,” says Sylvester. He wiggles in his camp chair, and I look over at my son. His dark hair flops over a pair of protective eclipse glasses as he angles his head toward the waning afternoon sun. 

We’re minutes away from a total solar eclipse, and I’m scribbling in my green notebook, trying to record my impressions of a family trip in search of wonder, a once-in-a-generation celestial event. So rare and special that Sylvester is missing a day of fifth grade. 

I tell myself that he’s being schooled in the science of the cosmos, the movement of planets. You can’t learn that in a classroom. Actually, you can, and he did already. (We have the artwork.) But here we are, sprawled out on a town common in Waterbury, Vermont, along with dozens of other eclipse-watchers, counting down to the magic moment. And we’re not the only ones skipping school. Friends have gone even further north to St. Johnsbury, which is smack-dab in the path of totality. And we unexpectedly run into another family we know from Cambridge, Massachusetts, on the common. 

Sylvester peers into my lap. “Will you be able to write in the dark?” he asks. 

Sure, I tell him. But when the eclipse happens, I can’t. Words fail me. Or I fail them. Only afterward do I pick up my pen. But nothing will measure up to the majesty of the light that we see and the vertiginous sensation of day becoming not-night, not-day. It lasts less than three minutes. Three head-spinning, heart-stopping minutes. 

As the crowd whoops and wows its appreciation at the spectacle, Sylvester turns to me again, his brown eyes no longer hidden by dark plastic panes. “The moon is covering the sun! Take a photo of it, Dad.” 

But I leave my phone in my bag. I want to listen and watch, to share the moment with Sylvester and Jenn, my wife. You can’t put a price on memories. At least, that’s how we justified our last-minute decision to book the last hotel room in town at peak eclipse price. 

Later, Jenn showed me her photos, including images of the sun she took as the moon began its hourlong occultation. We had watched its passage across the sun through the eclipse glasses we packed that morning in Cambridge, leaving home at 7 a.m. to beat the northbound traffic.

“It looks like a croissant,” I told Sylvester. 

He studied it again. “Dad, the colors are changing. It’s more orange now.” 

“OK, then an orange segment.” 

On our way over to the common, I’d told him about what the Aztecs saw in eclipses of the sun, the movements of which they tracked closely, both for practical reasons – as a farmer’s almanac – and to buttress their cosmic mythology. A total eclipse was a moment of peril: A monster threatened to consume the sun god Tonatiuh, plunging humanity into chaos and perpetual darkness. Only the proper rituals could stave off calamity; human sacrifices were involved. (I didn’t dwell on this point.)   

An Aztec-themed eclipse explanation seemed appropriate. In February, we had taken a vacation in Mexico City. We spent a sunbaked day at Teotihuacan, the colossal pyramid ruins that predated the Aztecs, where we walked the Avenue of the Dead. A vendor of tourist trinkets showed us a smooth patty of obsidian, a black volcanic rock, that fit in Sylvester’s palm. 

“Look at the sun,” he told us, and held the black disc to his eye. We did, and a red disc appeared. Before eclipse glasses, there was obsidian, which was traded widely across Mesoamerica and crafted into tools and blades.

Sylvester liked the pyramid tour, but Mexico City felt overwhelming at times, and he was glad to get home. And when I tell him in Vermont about the Aztec conception of eclipses, he doesn’t respond. Later, though, as we sit on the common, taking in the fading daylight as the moon slides into place, I try again. “The monster is taking bigger bites of the sun,” I say. 

He laughs. I suggest we need to offer a sacrifice to save the sun god. Mom has a bag of jalapeño chips. Maybe a chip? He agrees. A chip is a fair offer. 

Then Sylvester tells me about a book in the “Warriors” series, of which he has a passel of dog-eared paperbacks. The series features epic wars among clans of feral cats who inhabit a Hobbesian world. In this book, he explains, the four clans are battling for supremacy. “They’re fighting; then suddenly everything goes dark,” he says. “They all went running, wailing, and screaming home. But actually, it was an eclipse, because it went light again.” 

The warring cats thought that their ancestors had killed the sun “because they were angry with their fighting,” he continues. I nod. So they stop fighting? Yes, in that book, he says. 

After the sun reappears, spreading its warmth again, the crowd on the town common starts to disperse. The streets fill with cars as eclipse-chasers head off. Sylvester is also ready to move on. I’d rather sit longer to watch the moon’s onward passage and try to hold onto the feeling of wonder. But it’s time to go. 

The next total solar eclipse in August 2026 won’t be visible from North America. It will, however, pass over Iceland. We know a family who is already scoping out accommodation there. Maybe we should join them. Sylvester won’t even need to miss school.