At 3:26 pm Monday, April 8th, Burlington experienced a total solar eclipse: the rare moment when the moon moves completely in front of the sun. The last time Vermont was in the path of totality occurred almost 100 years ago, in 1932.
At Waterfront Park, just a 5-minute walk from BHS, thousands of people adorned with eclipse glasses and many eclipse-themed t-shirts set up blankets and chairs on the grass. The day was warm and sunny, despite a cloudy past couple of months. Live music was playing and lines of people snaked around food trucks. Some roads were closed and filled with pedestrians, and Church Street became packed with tourists and locals shopping, dining and enjoying the sun while waiting for the big moment.
Danielle- Parent Volunteer for a Girl Scout troop
“I’m from Connecticut. We’re a whole Girl Scout troop, so we caravaned up, [all] 14 of us. We’re camping and making it a whole trip. It’s fun because none of the girls have ever seen an eclipse before. And I’m very excited, I cannot wait.”
Meghan- college student from Burlington
“It’s nice to see this many people because it’s been a cold, dark winter and it’s nice to see a solid amount of people coming out to see something so monumental.”
Bruce- tourist from Connecticut
“I was out in Seattle to see the eclipse in 2017. It was lots of fun, just like this, lots of people in crowds. I loved the hush of the crowds when totality arrived.”
As totality approached, the sun continued disappearing further and further behind the moon. The temperature dropped. The world became darker and darker. As the last sliver of sun slipped behind the moon and a ring of bright white light surrounded it, instead of a hush, cheers erupted from the crowds all over Burlington as people simultaneously removed their eclipse glasses and looked up at the sky.
Geneva Walker- BHS student ‘27
“It was really cool. I’ve never seen anything like it before. It felt like I had an awakening, it just made me think about, like, how small we are.”
Debba Beynnon- BHS student ‘27
“It felt unreal. It was just cool to see that thousands of people came down to Vermont to see this once in a lifetime thing, [and that] everyone was fascinated with the same thing just for four minutes.”
Susan Blethen- BHS teacher
“It was just so amazing. It got dark, we heard owls. We heard the birds get quiet and it got dark with a little bit of an alpenglow almost. It’s really surreal. It was much more than I expected.”
After about three minutes of totality, the darkness receded and the streets filled with people leaving and recounting the phenomena they’d just witnessed.
Denny Mecham- first time eclipse viewer from Winooski
“It was very special. I won’t see another one in my lifetime. You begin to have this real sense of your own mortality and how big the universe is and how eons are behind us and ahead of us. When the ring around it appeared, it really was like a jewel in the sky…It felt personal and universal at the same time.”
