Tuesday, December 13, 2005
Alphabet Soup
We've made it to the "m's". Few places I have visited have taught me as much about power and where we as humans stand in relation to our Creator than Mount St. Helen's. While relatively small in volcanic terms, the power is obvious, tremendous, and humbling.I have chosen before during and after pictures here, but they still fail to completely communicate the power and resultant destruction wrought by this mountain and its eruption. Though the primary eruptions occurred before I met my wife, this mountain is also very special to her. It can be seen from the front porch of her childhood home, though not near so well since it had its top shaved off.
My wife and I visited some thirteen years after the major eruptions and approached up the Tootle River valley which experienced the massive mud slides that formed in the wake of the eruption and the incredible snow and glacier melt. Even at great distances massive levels of destruction were obvious, houses buried eave deep in mud, there to be preserved as in Pompei.Eventually the valley opens up and you are permitted a full view of the mountain, which then leads to a full view of the blast zone, and you are left breathless - destruction on an incomprehendible scale, even if you have studied the maps and seen the pictures.
As you come up the Tootle valley there are a series of vistors centers, each constructed closer to the mountain as it settled down and closer approaches became safer. They are quite informative. There is one display that will never leave my head, in 3-D relief it compares various widely known volcanic eruptions, and just for fun it includes the largest nuclear explosion known (a runaway hydrogen bomb detonated by the Soviets) The first thing that strikes you is surrounded by destruction as far as you can see, The eruption you are standing in the midst of is way on the small end of the scale -- and then you look smaller and find that hydrogen bomb, and you are humbled by the power of God's creation in comparison to our mightiest achievement.The planet can destoy me so much easier than I can destroy it.
The mountain is now quiet, but it is not still. Vapor can often be seen coming from it and the NYTimes recently ran a story on the building of the lava dome.Each second, about a cubic yard of new mountain - roughly a pickup truck's worth - is pushed to the surface, adding to a dome growing inside the crater.At that rate, it won't be long and the mountain will once again be plainly visible from my wife's old home.
