When the governor of the state of Baja California Sur reported that he was "profoundly moved" by the experience, he was making the same futile attempt that many of us will make over and over in these days and weeks (the wisest, perhaps, will simply remain silent): To give words to an emotion whose name we have trivialized to the point of meaninglessness; not fear, and yet more akin both to terror and to joy than to wonder.

I stood on a beach outside Cabo San Lucas, facing south. On my right the ocean was partially encircled by the hills of the point jutting out into the water beyond the town. Almost directly overhead, the sun was by now reduced to a tiny crescent, seen through the murky bluish black of my strip of number 14 welder's glass.

My breathing was heavy and irregular, punctuated by gasps as I clinched and unclinched my fists, my hands moving up and down involuntarily to the beat of an unheard drum. From time to time I raised both hands toward the sun in the sign of the Korno, oblivious to the people around me. Something was moving inexorably toward climax at a rate totally beyond my power either to hasten or to delay, to which I could only submit. My eyes filled with tears.

The man from Salt Lake City was running back and forth among his friends, shouting over and over, "I can't believe I'm really here!" A quarter hour earlier he had told me that this would be his second total solar eclipse. The first, he said, had radically changed his life. I was beginning to believe him.

For some time now the world had looked like a scene viewed through a camera's polarizing lens, reminding me of the miniature live seascape seen in Leonardo's camera obscura on Ocean Beach. Three planets were visible in a line extending from the sun down toward the horizon. The desert heat was gone, and it was growing dark. The shadows cast by the objects about me were fading, but their edges remained totally clear and sharp. Even without foreknowledge of the event, no one could have mistaken this darkness for the effect of a mere cloud passing before the sun.

Then suddenly the tiny solar crescent shrank to a point and vanished, and I glanced down just in time to see the leading edge of the shadow sweep with incredible speed across the ocean, across the hills of the point, across the bay, across the beach and into the east. And I looked up with naked eyes.

I saw neither the sun nor a monster devouring the sun, but the very fabric of the universe laid bare and rent asunder, both above me and inside me. Something primitive and wild was loosed upon the world, awakening its own image in the very depths of my self, and I embraced it.

The six and a half minutes of totality passed all too quickly. I can describe what I saw during that time. I can even show you a picture of it. The black disc was surrounded by the pearly white solar corona, which extended out in several directions like the points of a huge star. An immense solar flare was visible at one side of the disc. The pink and purple colors of sunset glowed around the full circle of the horizon. These things I saw, but what I experienced during that time I cannot even pretend to express. The man from Utah was right. I have learned the true meaning of awe. I have known the terror of the gods, and I will never be as I was before.

The blazing light of the sun broke through on the opposite side of the disc. The trailing edge of the shadow swept from west to east, and the cormorants resumed their flight. Again my eyes filled with tears as friends and strangers alike embraced and wept together.

Now the image of those few minutes of totality is burned indelibly into my mind. It haunts my visions and my dreams. Whenever I visualize it, chills run up and down my spine, and if I maintain the visualization long enough, tears stream down my face. Someday, perhaps, when I am stronger, I will dare to draw it down.

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