THESE ARE THE DAYS OF MIRACLE AND WONDER

IF IT SEEMED CRAZY TO TRAVEL ACROSS CONTINENTS ON THE OFF CHANCE OF GLIMPSING A TOTAL SOLAR ECLIPSE IN THE LAST WEEKS OF 2020, WELL, IT HAD BEEN A CRAZY YEAR. BUT WHEN JOHN BOWE MADE IT TO HIS TENTED CAMP HIGH IN THE CHILEAN LAKE DISTRICT, IT SEEMED THE STARS WERE, FINALLY, ALIGNED.

THE FORECAST couldn’t have been gloomier. December 12: rain. December 13: rain. December 14, the day of the solar eclipse I’d traveled 8,851 kilometers to see: more rain. I’d flown on the 11th, mid-pandemic, sitting masked up on a tense flight from New York to Santiago, then on to Temuco, in southern Chile. Of course, I had registered the dour weather predictions before boarding, but after nine months of house bondage, I didn’t care. The idea of perfect conditions or a perfect experience had long since fallen off the menu.

Throughout history, eclipses have been interpreted as cosmic, spiritual resets. Folklore from Scandinavia and Asia to the Americas depicts these events as a battle between light and dark, with the moon (or other malevolent actors like wolves, bears, frogs, or dragons) seeking to depose the diurnal status quo. Though the forces of light invariably triumph, the terror brought on by the sudden, surreal inversion of time, space, and the temperature was typically interpreted by soothsayers and medicine men as a warning: Pay heed. Take nothing for granted.

That said, my ambitions for the trip were far from profound. At the end of a long and brutal year, I wanted to gauge what I’d lost in lockdown. The pandemic had disrupted— obliterated, even—the daily flow of stimuli by which I apprehended the world, and by which I understood myself in relation to it. How bad a hit had my senses taken? Had the experience done away with my capacity for wonder?