Listen to Cheryl describe her experience seeing the total solar eclipse, through the audio player with this post.
Bartz set up on the side of a lake in the community along the southern border — camp chairs, solar filter glasses, and of course, an IPR hat — and watched the world change around her.
"When it was maybe 20 minutes into the partial eclipse, it started getting cooler, and when totality arrived, the ducks laid down on the bank and tucked in and went to sleep, and the bird noises quieted, and it got very dark. Nighttime dark," she told us during a live interview shortly after totality passed over Texas.
"It's very hard to put into words," she said. "It's completely natural and it doesn't seem natural at all."
She said the only thing it's similar to is an earthquake — also natural, even though they don't feel like it.
"But eclipses, they have all of the wonder, and none of the terror," she said. "It brings tears to your eyes. It's really hard to explain."
It will be decades before a solar eclipse appears over the U.S. again. But there will be more elsewhere on the globe before then. And she's getting ready.
"I've already looked at which ones are in my possible lifetime, and I will be trying to go to some if my health holds out," she said. "I talked to one guy around the lake this morning, he said 'I went to one, and I would never miss another one.'"
