Shelburnites, travelers unite under eclipse sky

Eleven-year-old New Jersey native David Danese pressed his eye against the magnifying glass of his giant Dobsonian telescope, using his right hand to gently move the lens into perfect focus.

“You can even see sunspots through this one,” he said, adding that he wasn’t at all upset to be ditching school to catch a view of the total solar eclipse in Vermont. In fact, he also wasn’t particularly bothered by the seven-hour drive it took his family to get to Shelburne.

Any passersby could see that this was not his first rodeo behind a telescope, and surprisingly, not even his first time using it to see a total solar eclipse. The Daneses wouldn’t technically consider themselves official eclipse chasers but did find themselves in another path of totality in 2017 during the last total solar eclipse — a moment so memorable that they couldn’t help but take another drive to see one again, this time landing at the Shelburne eclipse viewing party.

On the other side of the town athletic fields sat Don Bottaro and his wife, Chris Kelley, from Maryland who had been leisurely waiting for the big moment since 11 a.m.

“2:14 p.m.,” he said, checking his watch. “We should be getting some overlap now.” In a fashion like the 11-year-old sitting across the way, Bottaro pressed his eye against the telescope’s eyepiece. “Yep, there it is,” he said.

But Shelburne didn’t just gather Northeasterners. Some people, like Becky Johnson and her three children, traveled over 1,000 miles to catch what she called, “the best view in the country.”

“We came all the way from Georgia specifically for the eclipse,” said Johnson, noting they drove more than 18 hours to reach Shelburne. “In 2017 when it did go through a corner of north Georgia, I was there with my older kids, but my youngest was not born yet so I decided I had to get her into totality so she could see it.”

Similarly, Peter Friederich and a posse of nearly 15 people traveled from St. Augustine, Fla. But, unlike other travelers, there was no traditional telescope in sight for this crew. Instead, Friederich set up a brand new, state-of-the-art, Hestia — a cutting-edge device that turns a smartphone into a telescope.

“There’s no electronics to it,” he said, noting the simplicity of the gadget. “This was a Kickstarter thing I got involved with, with a company in France that was making this to help you take photos of the eclipse. I’ve never used it; this is my first time.”

Hidden among the travelers were new Shelburnites Zoe Wasserman and her husband, Phil Gorokhovsky, who moved to the area in November and are just beginning to sink their teeth into the new community.

“Shelburne, particularly, is gorgeous,” she said.

Other locals packed the streets by foot to make it to the party that featured DJ Matt Hagan spinning cosmic tunes for nearly three hours before serenading the crowd to Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon” as totality approached. Also in the mix were various food and merchant vendors, along with Carol Parven Hutter with Fun Factor, who brought games and other crafts for the kiddos.

As the sun disappeared by the minute behind the moon, eclipse-watchers from different states, who seemingly have nothing in common, found themselves in the same path of totality watching the celestial dance together in childlike wonder. Looking around the town event that gathered more than 700 people, the eclipse did more than leave people awestruck — it brought people together.

As cheers erupted while the air grew colder and a still darkness settled against the Green Mountain landscape, neighbors threw their arms around each other, and for just a few moments under the once-in-a-lifetime sky, they were no longer strangers.

For Pierson Library director Michael Hibben and development review board coordinator Kit Luster, this was exactly the moment they had been waiting months for, and it surely did not disappoint.

“Was that not incredible?” Hibben exclaimed, throwing his hands in the air. “That was magic.”