Just a hasty, hit and run note about the upcoming eclipse. We live on an island in the middle of the St. Lawrence River, in northern NY state, and we are one small bead on the string of ground zeros for the eclipse. Based on preregistrations for events, lodging, and other metrics used to read the entrails for predictions of tourist attendance, we are being told to brace for the worst—a sort of meat and vehicle apocalypse, with populations of certain areas doubling—or in our case, far more—on the big day.
We live on the bit over a mile-long road to a state park; six other houses are inhabited. The park has 432 camping sites and a several cabins. At full occupancy, such as on July 4, they might host 1600 to 2000 people, arriving over the space of several days. Summer holiday traffic can be pretty ugly on those major weekends. Their nature center was, at last report, planning on over 4000 visitors for their events. All coming (and leaving) the same day, right by our house inside a narrow window of a few hours. We are bracing for an onslaught of car-driving, blackout-glasses-wearing locusts to descend on us in the sort of mindless frenzy into which tourists are prone to lapse.
Many local businesses are not yet open for the season, others are closing early in self-defense, and of course some will cash in if they can; this is a tourist area, and much of our economy is based on extracting money from people from elsewhere.
As a practical matter many places are treating what is to come like a sort of unnatural disaster. Schools are closed that day, so kids can watch the event, and because of fears the buses will be stranded in gridlock. Medical and professional offices will be closed. I’m on the board of a library on the mainland, and we’re closing at noon so our staff has a chance of getting home, and so our library doesn’t become a very busy public toilet that happens to be exceptionally well-stocked with reading material.
So our area is seeing porta-potties spring up like peculiar blossoms everywhere. Streets closed, traffic rerouted, access to private properties blocked off by various means, that grim, bracing for a storm expression on many faces. We have been warned that gas stations may be overwhelmed, grocery stores stripped bare, cell service overwhelmed. Stock up, they say.
That’s not an issue for us, we have a land line, full tanks, at least two weeks’ worth of many supplies, a month or more’s worth of others. We will treat the day as a cross between an insanely busy holiday weekend and a blizzard, not leaving our property until the tempest has passed, the plows have cleared the road, and the buzzards have policed up the carcasses.
We expect a mix of wonder and aggravation. I’m guessing a lot of folks in the sweet spot for the eclipse are expecting the same thing.