Madison, Wisconsin
Last week was the 30th anniversary of the Mount St. Helens eruption. I didn’t live up here then. Bob did.
There was a PBS Nova special about it and Bob asked me to DVR it so we could check it out.
(Aside: Great St Helens stuff at the Spokesman Review if you’re interested.)
It was half super-interesting and half overdramatic hoohaw. We were a little bit disappointed by how corny some of it was.
In 2005 the mountain started burping. I was here for that and I’m sure I wrote about it but since I’m still putting off the skull beating it’s going to take for me to figure out how to fix my archives, I can’t link to it.
The Nova special emphasizes that we were moments from violent death. That crazy mountain could do anything. Then there would be some musical beat to punctuate just how big the danger was and a lingering shot of a doe and fawn tiptoeing into the trees. No doubt they would be incinerated shortly
The only thing I remember worrying about is that something would happen and I would miss it.
See you tommmmoooorrrooowwwww!!!!! 🙂
I remember it well. Bob and I grabbed cameras and did our best to get behind the sheriff’s barricades for some good pictures of the mountain, but they’d had weeks to prepare and all the good roads in were blocked. We did get some good shots of the eruption while parked along the freeway near the truck weigh station north of Vancouver. We weren’t the only ones there with tripods and telephotos. Kodak made some good money that day, that’s for sure.
I want one of those metal-men for my roof! The neighbors would love it.
I hate those over-dramatized natural-disaster made-for-tv specials. (Sorry, just trying to get as many over-hyphenated words as possible in one comment.)