As the eclipse festival put on by the sustainability group Common Roots continued at Wheeler Nature Park, program director Kayli O’Donnell headed to the nearby gardens in order to experience the total solar eclipse in solitude.
She has strong ties to the garden, she said, having worked seven summers there.
The eclipse can be “a big moment of transition,” she mused. “I plant everything according to the phases of the moon and to witness the new moon like this is very special.”
Meanwhile, South Burlington resident Heather Channon folded up a picnic blanket as her son Xander, ran around the now empty field.
Xander said he liked watching the eclipse and painted a T-shirt during the festival.
Just over a mile away at Overlook Park, Carrie Lyon and her daughter Natalie Lyon, 17 stopped by for a quiet moment after the eclipse, which they had watched with about 20 other people from their backyard on Pheasant Way. The park had been packed during totality, but was becoming quiet as evening approached.
“It was pretty cool,” said the teen, who attends South Burlington High School and sported a “Explore More” space T-shirt and a NASA temporary tattoo on her left hand.
Her mother agreed that it lived up to the hype, describing how the temperature fell, how dark it got and how the mosquitoes and bats came out for a few minutes at totality.
Brian MacDonald and his cousin Fred Crisp took a bike ride by Overlook Park after watching the eclipse from a nearby scenic spot in South Burlington.
“There’s a certain thing that happens around totality that’s unlike anything else — like one whole day in a half-hour,” said MacDonald, who lives in Burlington. “It was like seeing dawn from the wrong side.”
Crisp, a graphic designer visiting from Northampton, Massachusetts, said it was “completely different to stare at a black hole in the sky.”
They both loved the light and the colors of the horizon during the once-in-a-lifetime moment.
