An Unforgettable Day

Day 218: For weeks, we'd been listening to the daily reports of activity at Mt. St. Helens, convinced that an eruption was imminent. Every time my mother rang our phone, I expected her to tell me she'd just heard the news on her radio. I'd answer, "Did she blow?" and then we'd discuss the frequency and intensity of the swarms of seismic activity going on below the mountain. I'd stood on her summit only a few months previously, a winter climb which was always one of my favourites for the magnificent and varied ice formations we'd encounter en route. A year or so later, I found out that I'd been the last woman to stand on the peak, but that's another story. I'd close our conversation with our by-word: "The pumice is coming!" but in fact, the eventual eruption exceeded any expectations any of us might have had.

On this particular morning of May 18, 1980, the phone rang, and as I picked it up, I looked out the kitchen window toward the east where it seemed a massive rainstorm was building as black mammatus clouds were rolling up from the south. Certain that it was my mother on the other end of the line at that hour of the day, I answered the call with, "Did she do it?" My mother's utter glee was infectious as she announced, "Yes! She did!" The rest of that day is history...big history...but before it was over, my husband was insistent on having a piece of it, in the most literal sense. At great risk to our car's engine, we set out for Morton via Centralia, but only made it as far as Cinebar where we collected fresh volcanic ash before deciding to turn back. The cloud of pulverized rock blew east, engulfing Yakima and eastern Washington, but missed our home entirely (a circumstance we failed to avoid in later eruptions). Even more remarkable was that we were in what the Oregon Museum of Science termed the "Cone of Silence." Even though we were only about 35 miles from the mountain, we didn't hear a thing, although friends hundreds of miles away heard a roar similar to a sonic boom but longer and stronger. May 18, 1980 was a day I'll never forget.