On The Path to Totality

I forget how many people make Cambridge their home, that is, until the sun comes out. We emerge in droves, seeking the sun’s supple rays, hoping to grab and let them spill through our fingers like liquid gold.

***

On Monday, instead of chasing the path of totality alongside tens of thousands of eager New Englanders, I decided to explore Cambridge alone.

I started in the park outside of Peet’s Coffee. I managed to snag one of the picnic tables before the gaggles of eclipse-seekers infiltrated the small green space. A musician played the guitar in front of me, resting his instrument every few minutes to look up at the shadowed sun. Without eclipse glasses, his wrinkled hands shaded his squinted eyes.

A girl noticed and approached the man with outstretched hands. I thought she was going to give him a dollar, but she handed him her glasses instead. I saw the musician’s lips softly shape the words “thank you.”

I headed back to my dorm for a quick work call, running into a friend along the way. She lent me her glasses, and I looked to the sky for the first time that day. The sun was a fiery sliver of bronze against the glasses’ black, translucent film; its mouth was curled in a soft smile.

The rest of the walk back to my dorm felt like a dream. Little pockets of people dotted the Cambridge landscape. Everywhere I looked, people stood in clusters, gazing up in wonder, unable to stop themselves from giddily laughing with those around them. I watched as onlookers traded and bartered eclipse glasses and exclamations of awe — currency transcended the U.S. dollar.

After my call, I made my way towards the river. The moon slowly moved, and the sky became less and less overcast. Warmth returned to the sun’s rays. I sat at my second rickety picnic table that day and began to write about how much I valued being alone. While lines of cars snaked through the countryside, picnics were planned, champagne bottles popped, and the sun and moon engaged in their hypnotic dance, I sat alone, in the liminal space I had carved out of the buzz.

I was reminded of my freshman year, when Covid-19 restrictions curtailed virtually all forms of in-person interaction. At the time, any residual solitude felt like a social regression, an erosion of what this “college thing” was supposed to be.

Sophomore year brought House life and roommates and legal gatherings of over four people — campus was battered by the unrelenting waves of a roiling social ocean, and we all craved participation in the chaotic spontaneity. Saying no to a plan, then, felt impossible, because we had been forced to do exactly that for months. We couldn’t bear to waste any more of the “best years of our lives.” Alone time became stigmatized, as college was meant to be experienced, not necessarily processed. God, it was glorious — trashing our bodies for the sake of memories that ended up half-forgotten.

That was how I spent my first two years here, teetering between the poles of social ecstasy and isolation. I seized moments of connection and clutched onto them like my life depended on it.

That is no longer how I feel. I no longer stew in weekly, ritualized anxiety. Over the span of seven semesters, I went from worrying if I’d see anyone in a week to weekends that started on Wednesday, brimming with plans. I now swim in the social ocean, treading water with ease and excitement, and I will miss it, dearly, when we all say goodbye in two months.

I have built a beautiful network of friendships, and it — in the spirit of dialectical reciprocity — has built me.

But, just as moments of socializing were rare freshman year, moments alone are even rarer senior year. And so, Monday was precious, sacred even, colored in the same anomalistic joy those first social interactions freshman year were.

As peers huddled together, their eyes searching the sky, my mind grew weary of its own company. Frankly, this didn’t bother me — it was exhaustion well-earned.

***

I end my journey on the steps of Memorial Church. The building envelopes me in a warm embrace, and somehow, the complexities of my relationship with the structure and all that it represents melt away. I turn my gaze to the scene before me, the final residue of the eclipse.

The sun is setting, and my fingers are cold and brittle. People still mill about, walking in crisscross patterns across Tercentenary Theater while others play spikeball or enjoy the company of their friends, lounging with interlocking limbs on picnic blankets. The sun bathes Sever Hall in golden light, and the red bricks look like they are on fire.

Ellie H. Ashby ’24, a Crimson Editorial Comp Director, is a Social Studies concentrator in Adams House.