Believe it or not, I remember exactly where I was. May 18, 1980 was my Confirmation from Zion Lutheran Church in Cloverdale, BC. For those unfamiliar with that term, confirmation is the culmination of 2 years of weekly classes in the teachings of Martin Luther. After the Confirmation ceremony students are eligible to partake in their first Lutheran Communion.
As a family, we were all up early that Sunday morning getting ready for church. It was a really hot Spring morning and all the windows in the house were open. Two windows faced South, my bedroom and the bathroom. White Rock, where I lived, is a coastal community on Semiahmoo Bay, at the most Southwesterly tip of BC (excluding Vancouver Island, of course).
The breezes off the Bay no doubt helped carry the enormous sound wave of the volcano’s eruption North. I’ve heard since that the explosion wasn’t deafening at the source, but it was sure audible in my home town. It would be interesting to study the acoustical principals responsible for sending the sound of a cannon explosion across an entire State.
That’s the comparison I made at the time. It sounded like a cannon had fired from the shore of the Bay. My Dad, Mom and I all heard it; we were completely perplexed. It wasn’t until we got to church that we learned what had caused the sound. Our Pastor was very good at weaving everyday occurrences into his sermons.
It’s interesting that the ‘unpronounceable’ Icelandic volcano has been so much in the news lately. I remember seeing moonscape scenes close to Mount St. Helens broadcast on the news from towns in Oregon and Washington. Ash even drifted as far North as Edmonton. Here, however, we escaped the ash. The high level air currents were gracious to us.
About 15 years ago I visited the crater during a motorcycle trip. Fifteen years after the eruption it was still awe-inspiring to witness the scope of devastation. Small ground cover plants and scrub trees were abundant, but very little else. Park guides told us that wildlife was beginning to return. And this was 15 years later!
Recently we’ve been planning a summer trip, and since we just bought a new Mazda 3, we thought we’d do a road trip to Portland. Since we were going to be driving right past anyway, I suggested we should take a detour to see Mount St. Helens; my wife has never been there.
It’s hard to believe it's the 30th anniversary of the “Big One”. I think of Mount St. Helens every May 18th.
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