Thirty years and a day ago, Mt. St. Helens erupted. At the time, we were living in a one room cabin in Pend Oreille County, in the northeastern part of Washington State. It was a strange day.
My parents, I guess, knew the eruption was pending, but it was a great surprise to Dan and Doug and I. I remember vividly that it didn’t get light that morning like it should have, and that ash began falling from the sky. I remember I was afraid to go outside- to the outhouse. I remember animals hiding.
Eventually, years later, I remember climbing to the rim of the St. Helens crater, and seeing the magnitude of the blast that sent pieces of a mountain falling out of the sky, three hundred miles away.
We had all been up on a wood cutting outing for the day and were on our way home to the cabin. We had cut tamarak poles (which I later peeled) and I helped your dad load them. It’s amazing I don’t have back trouble today! Back to the blast . . . we saw a dark gray blanket coming our way in the distance and really didn’t know what it was. The radio informed us of the eruption. It was very surreal. Your dad made a trip into Newport the following day and said it was like a movie set for an “end days” type of film. No one was out and about and everything was covered in a fine gray dust.