Tuesday, September 28, 2004
Helen's Ashes
Pardon the short break I took as I was rather unmotivated by anything in the news to write a post. However, in response to my friend Tina’s pleas that I “freakin’ write something already for the love of G-D! you have an obligation and besides, you forgot to send me a card on my birthday you horrid, horrid so called friend”, (sorry Tina....I always remember birthdays until about two days before and then my mind completely wipes out the memory....Everyone wish Tina a happy belated birthday please), and because Mt. St. Helens has been burping around lately, I thought I’d take this time to tell you my Mt. St. Helens story from 1980.
I know, it is exciting isn’t it? Gather round kiddies, it’s story time.
It was May 17, 1980 and I lived about 4 hours away from the Seattle area in central WA state. I was a wee lass of nine years when I went with a school friend and her grandparents, (who just so happened to live next door to us), to go mushroom picking out in the woods one day. (Not those kinds of mushrooms...I was a little kid and didn’t know about the so called “fun” mushrooms.) There were two reasons I went on this little trip. The first was to get the hell out of the house and away from my parents for a day and the second reason was because the school friend, Christy, was very popular but nice to everyone and I really wanted to be her friend. So off we went.
We had such a good time that day that Christy invited me to spend the night at her place at the end of that day. We laid our sleeping bags out in the living room and stayed up way too late watching t.v. I used to be a very light sleeper and hardly slept at all for whatever reasons, hyper-active child I was, and so I was awake very early the morning of May 18th, 1980. However, my friend Christy was still zonked out and so I laid there, in my sleeping bag, waiting and waiting and waiting, wishing she would wake up already so we could go play.
BOOM!
It sounded like a bomb. It sounded like an explosion had happened just down the street. The blast was incredibly loud and to give you an idea of just how loud it truly was, we lived over 200 miles away from the mountain. I started and my friend bolted up right and demanded to know, “What was that!?” Me, in my all glorious nine year old wisdom stated, “Ah, it’s probably the Russians trying to bomb Iran.” Yes, very matter of factly. Remember, I was nine, okay. We got up and got dressed and went outside. The sun was shining and the air was clear but it wasn’t going to stay that way for very long.
The ash from the mountain traveled to our town and many other towns and cities all the way to the south east of the state and covered every square inch in a very heavy blanket of gray. The best way to describe it is to compare it to a heavy snowfall except that this was volcanic ash. It covered the roads, cars, homes, streets, yards, buildings...everything. The sky was a solid gray. You could not see the actual sky. All around you, as far as the eye could see, it was gray, gray, gray. Take a photo of your neighborhood and then go into photoshop and just gray it out. That’s what it was like. This was fun for approximately one day. But the ash lingered for 2 solid weeks and at nine years of age, 2 weeks felt like 2 months. There were times when I wondered if we would ever see the blue of the sky ever again. In some areas, the ash in the air was so thick that people had to wear masks over their faces so they would be able to breathe.
For our memory boxes, my dad bought vials and went out into the backyard to fill each vial up with the volcanic ash and then placed a sticker on the outside of each one with the name of the mountain, the date and that it was the ash from that mountain. We still have those vials to this day.
Washington State also has another volcano that could go off any day and that is Mt. Ranier. If Mt. St. Helens blows her top again, it will make a mess and there may be loss of life on the human side, more than likely on the animal side, but if Ranier ever blows, there is going to be massive chaos, loss of life and frankly, I don’t know if that region can sustain that sort of event, humanwise. It will not only blow the town of Orting right off the map, but it will do a number on the city of Seattle and outlying suburbs which is yet just one more reason that I moved from that area. I would much rather deal with a hurricane or tornado than an earthquake or volcano. I’ve experienced the latter two and they are highly unpleasant experiences mostly because you don’t see them coming. At least with a tornado or hurricane, you have a little bit of warning and can get the hell out of town until it’s over.
The End.
That’s it for today kidlets. And remember, on your way out, again, please wish Tina a happy belated birthday since I’m such a sucky ass friend. Thank you.
