Mount St. Helens: Majesty of my Youth
The eruption
I was 13 years old on May 18th, 1980, when Mount. St. Helens erupted. I was at church, and when we came out to leave there were funny looking clouds in the sky. They looked a bit like storm clouds, but were different, darker and much more concentrated. Many of us stopped and stared at those strange clouds in wonder.
My mom said to my dad, “Look, I bet Mt. St. Helens just blew”.
“Don’t be ridiculous”, was his response. Turns out, it wasn’t ridiculous at all. Mt. St. Helens had indeed erupted, and she took the lives of 57 people with her. For days and weeks after the eruption, ash fell from the sky. Our little town of Vancouver, Washington, only got a few inches total, while places like Yakima were covered for weeks in ash and ran out of places to put it. She blew almost 3,000 feet off the top of what once was an almost perfectly round dome, changing the landscape of our lives forever.
