Tomorrow it will be 45 years since a big, loud bang boomed all over the Pacific Northwest, when Mount St. Helens erupted after week after week after week of rumbling and spewing steam.
I was soaking in a bathtub that morning, at my abode in Mount Vernon, about 160 miles north of the volcano, as a bird flies, when I heard three loud, concussive booms. Minutes later the next-door neighbor came over to inform us that the mountain had blown.
That news that the mountain had blown was the start of a long day of non-stop news, on TV, on the radio, followed by many days of worry about possible ash issues.
By the time the mountain calmed down the Skagit Valley had not been showered with any significant ash, while other locations in Washington, mostly Eastern Washington, as in the east side of the Cascade Mountain range, got covered with a thick layer of volcanic ash.
Mount St. Helens came back to my attention this morning, via emails from my Favorite Nephew Jason, the first of which only consisted of the infamous video about the Mount St. Helens eruption, with the video featuring Harry Truman, who became famous in the Northwest due to his refusal to leave his Spirit Lake location in the shadow of the volcano.
Jason was only 11 months old when the mountain exploded. I replied to Jason's email with a link to one of my blog posts about Mount St. Helens, which included the Harry Truman video.
That blog post was titled
Today's 34th Anniversary Of The Mount St. Helens Eruption Has Me Feeling Homesick.
I have flown over Mount St. Helens a few times flying back and forth from Texas to Washington.
I drove to the restricted zone weeks before the eruption. I could not get close enough to see the mountain.
It was not til the early 1990s that I drove back to the volcano. At that point in time one could access the blast zone from the north, via logging roads. It was so eerie, suddenly being in the blast zone with the forest of trees all knocked down, with the landscape void of any green vegetation of any sort. Eventually you got to a sort of overlook, looking down at the log choked remains of Spirit Lake.
The log choked remains of Spirit Lake is what we are looking down on in the photo documentation. I do not recollect if we got a good look at the actual volcano from this location.
The photo at the top was taken shortly before the move to Texas, late Summer of 1998, if I am remembering correctly. By then the Spirit Lake Memorial Highway had been built, with multiple visitor centers to visit on the way to the final visitor center, a large complex with an up-close look at the volcano.
I remember it as being closer than it looks in the photo documentation. I remember there was a well-done film telling the story of the eruption, with the finale of the film having the screen disappear revealing a huge window looking right at the crater.
At least that is how I remember it. I really do not trust my memory, at times. I remember that as being a tiring day, a day which started at Seaside, Oregon.
