Mt St Me

[darkemeralds]

Thanks to dine for the link, an absolutely fantastic, sobering, amazing set of photos from the Mt St Helens eruption that happened thirty years ago yesterday.

As someone born and raised in the shadow of "Mt St Me!!!" as my sister Helen used to call it, I can say that I've never had an experience more impossible to describe than that of seeing a mountain cut in half from one day to the next.

The photos at Boston.com in the link above do a great job of conveying the power of the eruption itself (the fallen trees like combed hair may be the most visceral), and the comments contain a host of "I remember when" stories that help define the impact it had on a lot of lives.

But to convey how it felt to look at the horizon in 1980 and see a different mountain than what I'd seen there all my life, nothing works as well as a before-and-after image:

Comments

[kis]

Whoah. O.O

[darkemeralds]

Yeah. It was a Very Big Deal. My sis, by the way, has a hike reserved for when you visit. We will play it by ear, but it's available.

[kis]

Mr Kis is delighted to hear that.

[darkemeralds]

For the likes of you and me, there will be Other Things.

[writerscramp]

Stunning. You're right: words fail to capture the magnitude of it.

I was in the first grade(!) when this happened and I remember the schools were closed for a few days (maybe a week?) because of the ash and concerns about kids being outside breathing it in. And there was a kid in my class named Danny Sanderson who had asthma, and his parents took him out of school to vacation in Hawaii for a few weeks (he hadn't come back by the time school got out for the summer) because they were so concerned about the ash affecting him. We watched the coverage non-stop -- I think my grandmother came down to stay with us so my mom didn't have to take time off work -- and I remember the pictures of shoveling ash off of cars in Washington/Oregon. So I was expecting to see that kind of ash fall in Wyoming, too, but it wasn't anything near that bad, of course.

About six months after we moved here, I was on I-5 NB on the Marquam and it happened to be a really clear day so I had a nice view of Mt. St. Helens, and I just suddenly wondered what it must've been like for someone sitting where I was, driving along and seeing that huge plume of smoke and ash and debris. Did traffic just stop? Did people get out of their cars? What a surreal experience that must've been!

[darkemeralds]

We knew it was coming for a few days before it actually happened, so there was a lot of fear and excitement. I lived in NW Portland at the time, and I remember walking and walking, trying to find a vantage point. Finally someone invited me to come up to the roof of their apartment building and we could see some of it from up there.

I don't think anyone really anticipated the magnitude of the explosion, but Portland had of the amazing views and less of the ash-shoveling than points east, and I think for most people here at the time, it was more fascinating and exciting than scary.

Still, there were the nightmares. Lots of us had them for years afterwards, of Mt Hood blowing up the same way.

[writerscramp]

Also? "Mt. St. Me!" is possibly the most simultaneously adorable and hilarious thing I have ever heard. I did an actual LOL reading that.

[darkemeralds]

It's a family favorite. :D