Did you see the eclipse? Matthew Riley, a pediatric gastroenterologist in Oregon, watched from the roof of his building in downtown Portland, where he saw the sky dim over Mount St. Helens and the freeways empty as the city stopped to stare at the sky. Mariann McKeever stepped out of her Chicago office to watch with her colleagues as the city experienced 89-percent coverage.

Kevin Fleming spent the eclipse day (a.k.a. his 45th birthday) with Guy Dixon, searching the bottom of a lake for his wedding ring, which he had lost while swimming. Guy and his wife, Julie Kline ’96, hosted a group of Dartmouth alumni spanning classes from ’86 to ’97 at their Virginia home to celebrate Vuyi Radebe and his family visiting from South Africa. Among the group was Ray Wadlow, visiting from D.C. “We never did find the ring, but we did catch a glimpse of the eclipse and I’m determined to visit again to find it. In the meantime, Guy is investing in an underwater metal detector.”

Rob McLennan recently moved to the Boulder, Colorado, area, where he is CFO of the Pro’s Closet, the world’s largest online used bicycles dealer. The night before the eclipse his family drove to Medicine Bow National Forest in southeast Wyoming, where you can pull off the road and camp anywhere in the forest. They watched from a clearing with wide-open views of the mountains to the west and a valley to the east. “My wife was the most excited of any of us, but our three girls enjoyed watching the moon eat the sun. The light began to change to an eerie dusk-like hue and it got noticeably cooler. At the moment of totality we took off our glasses and looked at the otherworldly black hole in the sky, with the sun’s corona clearly visible around the edges. I felt like I was standing on another planet—one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen. Worth every minute of the seven-hour traffic jam we suffered through to drive home that afternoon….”

Peter Ellman drove from Pinehurst, North Carolina, to Murrells Inlet, South Carolina, with his wife, Sarah, and their twin 14-year-old boys, Will and James. “Immediately it got dark and cool. Hundreds of people started yelling and cheering. The glasses came off and to be honest, I was not really prepared for what I saw. It was truly one of the most surreal, soul-stirring and spectacular, if not the most spectacular, things I have ever seen. Where the sun used to be was a black spot in the sky with a white halo (the sun’s corona) clearly visible around it. I have not yet seen a picture that does it justice because it looks alive. I took my eyes off the eclipse just for a moment to look around and all around us the sky was a dark pink. You could see stars. There was a slight breeze and pretty much all the hairs stood up on my body from the electricity of the moment. And then the diamond ring (the bright spot of the sun blasting out from around the moon as it continues its celestial course) and it was over. All I can say is it is really something that should be experienced at least once in your life—even worth traveling very far for. I felt very blessed and lucky to be able to make the time to see it and to see it with my family.”

2024 Montreal eclipse mini-reunion perhaps? In the meantime, keep your news coming!

—Kaja (Schuppert) Fickes, 2 Bishops Lane, Hingham, MA 02043; kaja.k.fickes.95@dartmouth.edu