Naples students say eclipse was 'the coolest thing ever'

As a dense set of clouds crept over the Georgia Blue Ridge Mountains, a palpable sense of worry and dread filled the air. It was just moments before totality Monday afternoon — when the moon fully eclipsed the sun — and the thousands of solar eclipse chasers, some who had come from as far away as Naples, could no longer see the sun.

“Well, that’s it,” Olivia Westervelt, 15, said. “We’ve had a fun trip anyways.”

Olivia, a 10th-grader at Seacrest Country Day School in East Naples, drove more than 15 hours with two classmates and Seacrest three staff members to experience more than two minutes of totality in Dillard, Georgia.

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Back in Naples, just 81 percent of the eclipse was expected to be visible.

Olivia’s friend Thomas Richardson, 15, began chanting, “Move, clouds! Get out the way! Get out the way, clouds; get out the way!” — his version of rapper Ludacris’ song “Move” — and other spectators joined in.

And then, just as the moon slid completely over the sun, the clouds listened and parted.

Cicadas began singing, and excitement reverberated through the crowd.

Then a spectacular light descended upon the valley and the corona became perfectly visible — it was an extraordinary sight.

People began screaming.

Seacrest administrator Marty Durham and science teacher Lisa McLaughin grabbed each other and jumped up and down, their mouths agape.

“I’ve seen a lot of really cool things — moonbows, bioluminescence,” McLaughlin said, “but to experience night in the middle of the day was the absolute coolest thing I’ve ever seen.

“Seeing the eclipse, it makes you feel a part of something larger than yourself.”

Thomas couldn’t believe the sudden change in weather. He had just been making plans to travel to Texas for the next solar eclipse to hit the U.S. in 2024 when the clouds decided to play along.

“I literally have no words,” Thomas said. “It’s like the stars literally aligned. That was the coolest thing I’ve seen probably ever.”

Marc Barry, a math teacher at Seacrest, was awed by the sense of community fostered by the otherworldly event.

He set up a telescope that provided a crystal-clear view of the display and encouraged passers-by to take a look.

“Feeling the positive energy all around you from strangers experiencing nature together was just incredible,” he said.

The group from Seacrest left Naples on Friday and drove 13½ hours through heavy Atlanta traffic to Blue Ridge, Georgia, where they spent the weekend camping, hiking and tubing down a river.

Barry, a Boy Scout scoutmaster, taught the students outdoor survival skills, and McLaughlin, the science teacher who also is a former Navy engineer, gave an astronomy lesson.

On the day of the eclipse, the group awoke before dawn to pack up camp and drive two hours through the misty Blue Ridge mountains to a viewing party in Dillard, Georgia, where totality was expected to last roughly two minutes longer than in Blue Ridge.

They arrived three hours before the eclipse and killed time by enjoying a Southern barbeque buffet and watching big-bellied men dressed in denim overalls and camouflage baseball caps strum banjos and guitars.

It was a truly Georgian experience, Thomas said.

“Going into this trip, I knew it was going to be amazing,” he said. “But now, having seen the eclipse, I know I’ll remember that experience until I die.”