Barbara J. Hamby

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The Saintly Mountain Burped

Well, Mt. St. Helens finally burped again today and we didn’t know until friends of ours arrived to visit about 1:00 p.m. and asked if we had heard. We turned on the television and watched for a while, until the soap operas came back on again.

We live in a Southwestern suburb of Portland in an area where the mountains aren’t visible. I sometimes get a glimpse of Mt. Hood when I cross I-5 on an overpass, but rarely see Mt. St. Helens.

In 1980 and subsequent years I lived in North Portland and Vancouver where we had a good view of all the activity. My late husband and I were inside a rental house painting when it first blew and didn’t know until we received a phone call. We weren’t really sure we could believe the caller but, when we left to get more paint, people were lined up on a nearby freeway overpass watching the steam and ash flow. The house we were painting had its original windows, circa 1913, and the ash etched them, so they had to be replaced eventually. The old Airstream in the backyard was covered in ash, as was the entire yard. The aftermath of that eruption was long-lasting and hard to imagine.

After most of the ash was gone in Vancouver, in July of 1985, I went with friends up the old Windy Ridge Road. Not much had been done since the 1980 eruption. A few insects and small animals were starting to appear and some vegetation was beginning to color the very bleak landscape. We passed a wrecked car on the way up that still had belongings of its former occupants in it. I assumed they did not survive. The aura was eery. Ten to twelve years later, I went to a lovely visitors’ center on a new road. The picture was entirely different by then.

After the big eruption, I remember thinking, as a child, that I would never see a volcano erupt. All the ones I heard about in those days were far away. Life has been full of surprises.