Mount St. Helens - 9/21/13

I had the privilege of spending the whole day with a very good friend of mine on a striking beginning of fall day in one of the most breathtaking places I have ever been: up at Mount St. Helens. It was a gorgeous day, raining off and on, sure, and the clouds never really let us see the whole mountain, but it was sunny enough during our 6 mile hike along the ridge line, and the colors of the valley below us, so devastated 33 years ago by that eruption, were absolutely stunning.

I wasn't even born when the mountain erupted. My parents both remember where they were. I had thought that maybe 33 years would make it so that we wouldn't be able to see exactly what had happened, or to truly understand the aftermath of such a violent eruption. I was wrong.

 Spirit Lake still bears thousands of trees, floating, after they were put there three decades ago by the landslide that lifted them clean out of the ground at times to dump them unceremoniously into the lake. Apparently, this isn't even very many of them as the log flow covers over a third of the lake.

 

The Mountain itself has vein like rivers running down it from where water has carved away at the mud slides. And the valley itself is hundreds of pockets of wetlands from where the mud wiped away all of the existing river beds and created new lakes, new rivers and new ponds. And there are still hardly any trees. Just bushes, grasses, wildflowers, and moss.

 

It was one of those moments. Where you just look across the landscape and stand in awe of the creator of the universe. Who not only made the mountain to begin with, but knew how and when it would erupt, and then in his majesty, made the aftermath just as dangerously beautiful.