We sat back in our lawn chairs like they were front row seats at a Bruce Springsteen concert, sipping Bloody Marys, two dogs eddying around us. Showtime was an hour hence. Giddy and expectant, the seven of us lounged in a meadow near Galena, in Grant County.

Monitoring the ever-growing bite out of the sun, our discussion ranged to and fro, from rattlesnakes to vampires. Someone started singing, “You are my sunshine” and everyone joined in.

Camping next to us, seven photographers readied their cameras. My camera, however, would stay in its bag. On Sunday afternoon, while fording the shallow middle fork of the John Day River with camera slung around my neck, the strap broke and my Canon tumbled into the water. Glug. My horror evolved into acceptance by eclipse time as I rationalized the experience could actually be more meaningful unencumbered by a camera.

As the moment neared, camera forgotten, conversation stopped. The sun and moon aligned and a glow rimmed the pair. Hushed awe, punctuated by sounds of wonder.

“Wow.” “I’m getting chills.” “What a rush.”

As a skeptical journalist accustomed to ignoring hyperbole, I realized this event had actually lived up to the hype.

Yes, what a rush.

— Reporter Kathy Aney writes about health and human interest.

Intern Emily Olson and I left Pendleton at 6 a.m. for Baker City, posting updates to the East Oregonian Facebook page along the way.

Once in the zone of totality, we pulled off on a gravel road and parked alongside a wary band of horses, the Elkhorn Mountains to our west and the Wallowas to our north.

Then, over the course of an hour, the world as we knew it became a world we did not know.

It’s hard to name the feeling. As totality approached, we watched the surrounding mountains drop into darkness. There was a sunsettish tint in every direction, but the colors were more purple and gray. The light became hazy and then it was sharp and precise, then hazy again.

And then it was dark. The corona of the sun danced and sparkled, small and high in the sky. In utter confusion, I looked at it and then at my hands, the ground and the outlines of the mountains. I made circles of looking.

And just like that it was over. The veil fell back into place, the old world reappeared with its comfortable clarity.

Still, though. I won’t forget what I saw under that veil.

— Tim Trainor is opinion page editor for the newspaper.

Having already decided to stay in Pendleton rather than seek a spot in the path of totality, I spent the weeks leading up to the solar eclipse wondering aloud what the difference would be between 98 percent coverage and 100 percent.

A lot, it turns out, but that doesn’t mean the eclipse wasn’t a memorable in-town experience.

Rather than bathe the city in total darkness, Pendleton’s partial eclipse culminated in a heavy pall, as if the world’s contrast settings had been temporarily lowered.

As the eclipse began to crescendo, a man from a nearby office asked me if he could use my glasses to peek at the diminished sun.

I happily obliged, because this temporary bout of celestial weirdness should be a communal experience.

Unlike previous total eclipses, technology gives us the benefit of watching Monday’s eclipse repeatedly and on-demand with unmitigated clarity.

But even with that in mind, millions of us took the time Monday morning to put on silly paper glasses and crane our heads toward the sky.

— Antonio Sierra covers Pendleton city and schools.

The EO’s “Eclipse plans for procrastinators” was resonating a little too strongly for me when, as of Friday, I was without a pair of those all-important eclipse glasses.

A stranger on Facebook had offered to sell me a pair in a grocery store parking lot for $10 but I wasn’t sure if the glasses’ ISO rating would be the only shady thing about the deal. Luckily, my brother and new sister-in-law made a last-minute request to stay the night on their way home from their honeymoon, and were willing to spare a pair in exchange for lodging.

The moment I put on the glasses Monday, I could see what all the fuss was about. The flimsy little spectacles took the experience from “overcast day” to “heavenly pageant.”

I texted a fellow procrastinator and invited him to stop by while I was interviewing other eclipse-watchers at Hermiston’s Butte Park and take a peek, but he insisted he was fine with brief looks upward in dark sunglasses.

“Don’t yell at me but my eyes are beginning to hurt,” he texted me a few minutes later.

— Reporter Jade McDowell covers west Umatilla County.

I think I’d like to keep a total solar eclipse in my pocket, for days when I doubt that the world contains wonder and magic.

The eclipse’s power is revealed subtly. In the moments before totality, colors fade and shadows elongate. The temperature drops and birds cease singing. The world is still as every watcher holds her breath.

Then it’s there — an ineffable spectacle of indigo sky, rosy horizon and shock-white corona dancing around the void. It’s gone before you can comprehend it, the duration just short enough to rob you of satisfaction.

But it leaves a wake of collective cheering, laughing, bewilderment and disbelief. You’re both aware of your infinite inconsequence and empowered by the solidarity. You somehow feel accomplished, like you communed with celestial beings.

And you forget, for just a moment, all that’s happening with North Korea and Steve Bannon and confederate statues and your own unstable future. For that precious, fleeting minute, the world is full of wonder.

— Emily Olson is the East Oregonian’s summer intern

I wavered for months, weighing the convenience of partiality against the experience of totality. Would a momentary dimming of the sky, highlighted by a bizarre ring of viewable sunlight in the center of it, be worth the hassle of getting in and out of the “zone” on a Monday morning? My inner cynic and inner child were at war.

The kicker, though, was my daughter, Anna, who is a week away from entering first grade. She has no specific interest in astronomy, but the general fascination with all things that comes with the age. She and I packed up Sunday night and hit the road for my mother-in-law’s house in southern Sherman County, where we camped on the front lawn and watched the stars. I bumbled through a dad-worthy explanation of how the orbits and rotations of the universe work and went to sleep in anticipation of seeing something remarkable.

And that was indeed what happened. It is explainable, but not describable. As we watched the moon nibble away at the sun, then cover it entirely, we were in awe. As it crossed to the other side, we couldn’t believe it was over.

Anna immediately wished we could see it again. It was a powerful lesson on seizing the moment when the stars align.

— Daniel Wattenburger is managing editor of the East Oregonian.