One of my friends at work has a little can full of little sayings by authors, philosophers, spiritual people, transcendentalists, people like that. Every day, we pick one and read it aloud. Here’s mine, from last week.
On this day, twenty seven years ago, Mount St. Helens erupted.
At the time, my family lived in Yakima, Washington, which was the first decent-sized town in the path of the ashfall. The eruption happened at about 8:30 a.m. We were just pulling up to St. Johns Episcopal Church, where my dad was the vicar, when someone called and said, “I just heard on the radio. . .Mount St. Helens erupted!” The handful of us who were there sat and thought for a few minutes, but when we saw the whole horizon turning black (on a cloudless morning), we decided we should try to get home if we could.
The ash cloud hit us halfway home. Instantly, visibility went to about two feet. It was like a warm, grey snowstorm, and it smelled horrible. We were driving about ten miles per hour, but we still almost hit a turn divider and ran off the road because we couldn’t see.
We did make it home safely, and good thing, too, because the ash fell for the next day or two. We ended up with about an inch and a half of ash everywhere. It killed plants and pets. It choked the fuel systems of cars. (Interestingly, I remember that people were able to drive their cars by stretching pantyhose over their carburetors. Isn’t that ingenious?)
I was nine years old, and I wasn’t scared at all. That’s the perfect age to be during something like that. Old enough to remember it, but young enough to be mesmerized by it.
The town completely shut down for about a week, while people shoveled their driveways and sidewalks, and street cleaners ran day and night. My brother and I would stand under the awning on the back patio and watch the ash falling for a long time. People were saying things like, “Don’t let the ash touch you, it’ll melt your skin!” and “If you breathe it in, it will kill you!” So when we did venture out, we wore those little breathing masks and sweltered in our winter coats, at least until we realized that it wasn’t THAT hot, and we could catch it in our hands.
I’ll never forget the video of the gigantic logging trucks being washed down the Toutle River, or the huge logs destroying bridges, or the picture of the newspaper photographer’s car buried by boiling mud.
One of our friends in the neighborhood drew a volcano in ball-point pen on a bunch of white T-shirts with a caption that said, “Mount St. Helens–a pain in the ASH!” O, the hilarity.
The local news had a field day with the eruption, as you can imagine. “WILL VEGETATION EVER GROW BACK?? WILL THE VOLCANO KILL YOUR PETS?? TUNE IN AT FIVE TO FIND OUT.” Well, most of the pets lived, and before too long, trees and plants were growing back stronger than before. I still remember the pictures in National Geographic of the first little sprouts growing up out of the ash.
It was an amazing experience, and one that I’ll remember as long as I live.
I got my heart broken tonight, by a song.
I’d be a hugely unprofessional a-hole if I went into any more detail about it, but make no mistake; my heart is broken.
What a month this has been.
Not a day has gone by that I haven’t thought, ‘Man, I need a new entry for my blog,’ but every time I sit down to start one, nothing comes.
I’ve been busy, so it’s not that.
I had an awesome gig in Salem with Breanna last Friday, then came home to a rockin’ Latin-American-themed house party at my building. Total blast.
Saturday morning, S&W and I went exploring in the hills of Southwest Portland to find as many of the old steps as we could. In the early 1900’s, the same group of people who built the Park Blocks thought it would be nice to have walking trails that linked the Park with the various neighborhoods. Many of them still exist, and they run through the most beautiful old parts of town. We traipsed around for about four or five hours. In fact, we even drove to Powell’s to find a book and look at a map, which we found and looked at, then drove back to a different set of steps. Total blast.
Sunday was house-cleaning day. I did six loads of laundry, washed the dishes, swept the sidewalk and steps outside, and took out the trash and recycling.
I realize this is all very well, but it doesn’t exactly make for an exciting blog entry. Oh well, I guess they all can’t be exciting.
Regardless, I’ve been too busy and too tired lately to be really creative. I’m also still really emotional about the Kelly situation. It’s been tough, especially since Luke is here with Alyssa now. I was very excited to have the four of us hang out once Luke arrived, and now he’s here–which is great, by the way–but at the same time, I feel like there’s a Kelly-shaped hole in the universe. Le Sigh.
I do have a Susie Blue gig tonight, so that will help lift me out of my funk. Nothing like playing great music with great friends to make you feel like yourself again. I’ll be better, and be back on my blogging game, soon enough.
When in doubt, there are always plenty more Yakima stories.
For the last couple of years that I lived in Yakima, mountain biking became my Thing. Yakima itself may be a dump, but it’s close to lots of beautiful mountainsandtrailsandskiingandhikingandbikingplaces. So there you go.
In order to get my strength and stamina up for our weekend jaunts to the mountains, I started riding my bike to my job at LocalComputerStore, which was about four miles each way. My favorite way to ride home was the dirt road along the railroad tracks that went through the older, historic parts of town.
Oh yeah. In order for this story to be funny, you need to know that back then I used to have my hair pretty long, in a mullet. Yes, a mullet. I usually kept it in a ponytail, though. That’s gotta count for something, right?
So picture this. I was riding along the tracks, with my ponytail and my helmet and my T-shirt and my long shorts. These two guys in a battered white Ford pickup came up behind me and honked, and PassengerSideGuy rolled the window down to yell, “Hey, nice tight ass!”
As they slowed down and pulled up alongside me, I looked over and laughed, which is when PassengerSide saw my five o’ clock shadow and glasses. He turned to DriverGuy and said, “Oh, dude. . .it’s a GUY. GO GO GO GO!” and he did that rolling motion with his index finger as he said “go go go” that made me laugh so hard I just about fell off my bike.
I was also glad, in that moment, that I wasn’t a girl riding by herself out in the middle of nowhere, because things would have likely been very different. Then again, if I was a girl who looked like I did at the time, I would have been a very scary-looking girl indeed. Hairiest legs in the world, for one thing. Scraggliest hair and biggest glasses, for another.
Sorry I’ve been so absent from blogging this week. I’ve had rehearsals almost every night, and I had a gig somewhere in there too. I should have a little more time this weekend for writing about more ‘real’ stuff than this. But in the meantime, I hope you enjoyed this story.
