Eruption

I was one month old when Mt. St Helens erupted. I don’t remember it any other way. But my parents do. My parents have a jar of ash they collected off their car the next day. They lived about 2 and a half hours away and they could see the explosion from their yard. All growing up we had pictures of the mountain exploding lining our hallways. A tribute to an extraordinary event. It is one of those days you talk about what you were doing the moment it happened because you remember. I don’t remember, I was too young.

Baby girl was seven when her daddy died. When her life exploded. It’s older then a month but my biggest fear is that it is not old enough to remember what it was like before. That she will say I don’t remember what life looked like before. We have an urn of ashes. Our halls are lined with pictures of the life before. A tribute to an extraordinary event. Will they mean anything to her? Or will she just listen to me talk about it. A life she doesn’t remember because she was too young.

I can imagine Mt St Helens before, serene and beautiful. Not a care in the world. Flowers, trees growing everywhere. The sun shinning on it. Lakes, people camping. Just like Mt Hood.  They were very similar. I grew up camping on Mt Hood in the summer. I can close my eyes and feel it. The mountain breeze, the tinkle of water. The smell of the trees. Fishing, hiking, swimming, campfires. It’s nature at it’s best. I never camped on Mt St Helens. It wasn’t hospitable enough, especially when I was young, I think it may have camping now. But I have been up there. You can still see the destruction 36 years later. You can still see ash everywhere. You can still see forests felled and burned by lava. You can see lava flows that have hardened and changed the beautiful landscape. Empty holes where lakes used to be.  Utter destruction. And then there are new things growing through it.
You are a mountain standing serene and beautiful. Covered with flowers, snow in the winter. The sun shines on you and you are at peace,

WHAT THE FUCK JUST HAPPENED

NO WAIT WHAT HAPPENED

SOMETHING EXPLODED

SOMETHING IS WRONG

WHAT IS GOING ON

STOP THIS ISN'T RIGHT

WAIT

NO IT CAN'T BE

NO

Half of you just exploded. Half of you blew up. People know it happened, they watched it from a distance. They gathered a jar of ash off their car 100 miles away. They didn’t get close, you were too inhospitable. Only the ones that were brave enough to come up to you could see the destruction that was left. The fallen, burnt trees, your life that was forever altered by raging lava But even those ones can’t see what’s left of your inside, a vast cavern of emptiness where life used to be. Sunken in the middle, a true hole. Nothing but a broken part of a whole,clearly your missing a crucial piece, but those who don’t remember what you looked like before don’t know the difference.


Mt St. Helens about three years ago

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