May 18: St. Helens memories

Wow. Today marks 30 years since the big Mt. St. Helens eruption. It’s one of those major childhood events that I can remember so many details about that it’s hard to believe it was that long ago.

I was in sixth grade when Mt. St. Helens first showed activity after years of dormancy—earthquakes, steam eruptions, and small ash bursts. Having a volcano in our backyard was a pretty cool thing. (I was also kind of a science nerd, or didja already guess that?) Depending on which way the wind was blowing during eruptions, Portland sometimes got ashfall. There was one eruption that filled our gutters and covered everything with a thin layer of gritty, dusty soot. Once the novelty wore off, it was nothing but a nuisance.

My classmates and I had pen pals at a school in Michigan at the time, and we frequently wrote to them about the latest on “our” volcano. We sent them small bottles of ash—they thought it was a huge deal, but all we had to do was scoop it off our sidewalks. It’s funny now to visit museum gift shops in the Northwest and see ash for sale. No one would have guessed 30 years ago, when we were having a heck of a time getting rid of it, that someday people would PAY for tiny bits of it in a pendant or a jar.

It was a Sunday morning when Mt. St. Helens really blew her top—May 18, 1980. I remember walking into the family room where my mom was watching the news, and although there were a lot of pictures of the ash cloud, not much was known yet about whether any people were hurt, or the extent of the damage. I remember being disappointed that there was still no lava. Why no lava? Volcanoes are supposed to spew lava! I was glad to see that the ash—so much more than what we’d seen so far—was falling to the east and NOT toward Portland.

After watching the reports for a while, I went outside to play. We lived in the Bethany area of Beaverton then, and if we looked down Parkview Drive we could see Mt. St. Helens’ ash cloud that morning. The thing went up about 12 miles into the sky, so it made sense that it was visible where we were (50 miles south); we were nonetheless surprised and fascinated by it. I have no idea where the pictures are that we took of the eruption that day, but I think I still have bottles of ash somewhere. I know I have tons of newspaper clippings in a scrapbook. (Remember? Science nerd. Big one.)

Mt. St. Helens continues to be active, but there hasn’t been another eruption comparable to the one on May 18, 1980. Lava domes have formed, but not once has lava ever poured or shot out of the volcano. Most of the area around Mt. St. Helens has been re-opened again, and several visitor information centers have been built, all concentrating on different aspects of the big eruption’s destruction and eventual re-growth of the forest and return of wildlife. Although the landscape changed dramatically that day, it really is still very beautiful.

It was 18 years ago or so that I went to one of the newer visitor information centers with Victor, Karen and Sherrice. The fog was thick but we still got a good view of the north side of the mountain. However, in looking through my photos from that day, it seems we were more interested in taking pictures of each other than Mt. St. Helens. Here’s one of the few photos I took outside, and even in this one, the incredible close-up view of the crater is behind Karen and Vic’s big heads.

Notice how Sherrice is sticking her butt out? Every other picture (at least the ones in my collection) had someone’s butt in it too. I chose not to scan and post those, and for that, you are welcome. Obviously the theme of our Mt. St. Helens visit that day was not so much ASH as ASS. I have no words to explain this behavior, especially from a science nerd such as myself. Well, the fact that we girls were 23-ish at the time ought to explain a LOT of it. The Much Older Victor has no excuse.

I haven’t been up to Mt. St. Helens since the butt trip. Katie and Jack have—their grandparents took them—and many, many times we’ve talked about going again. It’s one of those “oh well, it’ll still be there if we ever decide to go” things. Every time the anniversary of the big eruption rolls around, I’m reminded that we should plan a trip… and then I promptly forget about it.

But 30 years? I couldn’t let that anniversary go by without marking it somehow. Turns out I marked it by boring the kids silly with my recollections of that day. They were all, THROW LAVA INTO THE STORY AND MAYBE I’LL LISTEN.