Just another Volcano

“The Only Thing That Is Constant Is Change -”  - Heraclitus

Change seems to be the only element that is constant in our world of day to day.  Even the slightest change in what would normally be a mundane work week seems to rear its face from time to time.  Taking a group on a private tour to Mt. St. Helens, I expected a tremendous change to be prevalent.  Sometimes change is huge.  Other times its as subtle as a difference in the breeze.  Sometimes the subtlest of change can be the biggest difference.

Mt. St. Helens erupted on May 18th, 1980.  Since March of that year, it began giving a lot of clues:  earthquakes, and small eruptions.  On the morning of May 18th, geologist David A. Johnston was out on the northern ridge observing the mountain as he'd done many times before.  One big difference is that the mountain had bulged out 450 feet.  At 8:26 a.m., the entire north face collapsed in what would be the largest landslide in recorded history.  Then the eruption followed spewing upward and northward and blasting and burning everything for miles.   It would be the last time David Johnston would be seen again.  56 others would perish as well.

As I drove my group eastward on highway 504 toward the Johnston Ridge Visitor Center, I had expected full recovery.  What I saw shocked me. In the act of natural progression, in simple terms, lichens and mosses gather on the exposed bare rock and soil, and make more soil.  Pioneering plants will seed and grow on that weak soil and add nutrients to it staging it for the next levels.  Shrubs like alders and willows will begin growing.  Eventually deciduous trees will sprout, and finally coniferous trees will take over.  In Washington state, typically those trees are Douglas firs, western red cedar and western hemlock in the subalpine regions.  I had expected these deep green forests and trees to have made a young but fruitful recover over 37 years.  What I found was astounding.  For at least 14 miles out from the mountain remained mostly barren land.  The volcano had literally sterilized the land when the heat and ash blew through at approximately 300 miles per hour stunting the natural progression of regrowth.  Most of the rock remained exposed.  Bleached logs lay throughout the terrain.  Only in the valleys and more distant hillsides were there new signs of life.  Alders mostly gathered in the valleys, their rippled leaves apparent.  Young forests had regrown only where the land was protected from the blast due to natural geographic layout like cliff sides facing away.  New lakes were formed and rivers rerouted.  But for a western Washington terrain, it felt like I had landed on a distant planet at some other part of the galaxy.

But although stunted, there was change.  No more did one see the rivers of ash, or the mudflows pushing hard down rivers.  No more could one see a coned mountain, but a cratered opening.  And regrowth was happening.  It will be many years before this land returns to the thick green forest known commonly in this region.  For us humans, it may be beyond memory.  In geologic times, it is merely the blink of the eye.

Looking for Bigfoot

We bush whacked into the woods behind our RV pad near Ashford, Washington.  Andrea and I, looking for trail but only finding pathways where deer and other animals have passed previously.  That day was cloudy, and a grayness seemed to converge over all things, emphasizing the terrain into a misty glow.  We crossed over an old railroad track, long forgotten in which moss covered the medal rails and trees with diameters up to 2 feet had grown between the ties.  We stepped carefully, trying not to trample ferns and other flora that was mostly dormant during this winter month of January. 

Everything was wet.  Recent rains and snows had left things damp and dark.  We passed through a meadow, a forest fire of years past and recovering with new pines poking up with new life.  Andrea walked on with determination, dreams of finding treasures:  a railroad spike, coins from the 1800s or other pioneer antiquities of days long forgotten.  I too was looking for treasure, but of a different kind.  I was looking for something so profound that even as I write these words, I cannot define them.  Something about the depth of life, and the rebirth of spirit.

I was also looking for Bigfoot.  Sasquatch.  That myth that seemed to be synonymous with the Pacific North West and its deep plush forests.  More Bigfoot sightings have been reported in Pierce County Washington, than any other place in the state.  Some close to where we were.  Although still on the fence as to the true existence of the mythical creature, I couldn't help but wonder if I'd have  a chance to experience first hand and prove within myself its true existence.  So I kept watch.  Looking.  Waiting.

We reached a small stream.  The waters of snow and glacier melt kept it too swift and deep for easy (or dry) crossing, and Andrea and I resigned to staying put for the time, the sound of the rapid waters enveloping our ears.  Our eagerness to cross the stream and see what is beyond the banks, into the woods and the mystery of the  unknown was almost too strong to ignore.  I kept my vigilance of looking around as if expecting some dark haired yeti to be standing there, looking back at us in the same curiousness, then lumbering off into legend.  But the spaces between the thick pine forest remained still.  But I couldn't help but get a sense of energy about me as if we weren't alone.  It was as if all of my senses were heightened for the first time in a very long time.  The Jedi force was working it's magic within me as if even the movement of a snail would be known at that very time and place.  Every fiber of my being was reawakened.  I felt alive.

But with no treasure to be found, and the waning light fading, we made our way back through the forest, across the old burnt meadow and on to our quiet neighborhood of home.  Satisfied we'd experienced something, but unable to define exactly what, we knew that soon we'd be back on our search for treasure, for solitude or for life.  Or perhaps to discover a myth out there or within ourselves that had been previously unsolved.