Friday, October 08, 2004
October 7, 2004
Great Views and Serenity at VolcanoBy ELI SANDERS
OUNT ST. HELENS NATIONAL VOLCANIC MONUMENT, Wash., Oct. 6 - They sit for hours, gazing across a mud-caked valley toward the rumbling mountain. Over the last week, since Mount St. Helens reawakened after almost two decades with a huge plume of steam, thousands have come here from across the West Coast and as far away as Texas.
They sleep in nearby hotels or up here in cars, camper-vans and mobile homes and in sleeping bags laid across the rocky soil - all waiting for the earth to reveal its intentions. They have motored up to this mountain carting digital cameras, barbecue grills, coolers, wine, romance novels, telescopes, all in a sort of pilgrimage to the place where, they say, the earth feels more alive - and so do they.
"At our age we're racing the clock," said Gayle Boren, 66, of Midlothian, Tex., who flew here to southwest Washington with her friend Opal French, 75, of Lubbock, Tex. "We're trying to do and see as much as we can before we die."
Like so many others up here who seem content to pass entire days staring at the mostly quiet mountain - as active as it looks on television, it really only erupts once in a while, and then for at most an hour at a time - the pair said they had come in search of a feeling.
They sat together on canvas chairs borrowed from a young couple nearby, under the shade of an alder tree near the Castle Lake Viewpoint, about eight miles from the mountain's crater. They explained the feeling they were after: a thrill that was as much about waiting for a volcano to erupt as it was about the sense of escape.
"It's something we can enjoy without someone being hurt," said Ms. Boren, who was staying at the Comfort Inn in Kelso, Wash.
It was taking their minds off presidential and vice-presidential debates (boring and predictable), they said, the news of the Iraq war and terrorism (depressing) and the 9/11 Commission Report (long, complicated and depressing). Ms. Boren brought the commission report with her up to the mountain but has so far decided not to read it.
There is a rhythm to the volcano-watching day. For those staying in nearby hotels, it begins with the latest reports on television, which on both Monday and Tuesday brought what they had been waiting for: word of eruptions, minor but dramatic. With each breathless broadcast new pilgrims come to the mountain.
For those already up here, some sleeping here for days now, the mountain had already delivered the news from across the valley and into the sky.
Scientists have for days been predicting a more serious eruption of the mountain, which in 1980 produced a large explosion that left 57 dead. But they now say it could take weeks, or may never happen, and after seismic tremors beneath the mountain's lava dome dropped off by Wednesday scientists lowered the volcanic alert level one notch, from "code red'' to "code orange."
The people up here seem to be finding something they need.
Colleen Grant, 46, of Coquitlam, British Columbia, said the experience was helping her get over those "control issues" her husband teases her about. Forced to surrender to geologic time while waiting for the big one, she found it calming, she said, and with a mixture of serenity and pleasant surprise, added, "We have no control."
On Sunday night, in honor of the reddish lava they hoped was rising from within the mountain, Ms. Grant, a lab technologist, and her husband, Rod, a caterer, drank merlot with barbecued steaks and prawns. Late Monday afternoon they sat on chairs atop a fake-grass mat outside their 22-foot mobile home. She was sipping white wine and he was working on a can of Coors.
"We're all here for the same common reason," Mr. Grant said.
By Tuesday afternoon, after three days on the mountain forced them to move from gourmet food to frozen fare, they had decided to leave. They said they were satisfied after seeing two steam explosions.
But a neighbor on the mountain, Judy Ziese, 55, a "retired housewife" from Port Angeles, Wash., said she would hold out for the big one, sleeping in her white Ford Expedition, which she was calling her "Ford Explosion."
Ms. Ziese's husband declined to join her on this trek more than 200 miles from home, so she packed up almond butter, jam, sprouted-wheat bread, string cheese and set out with her Chihuahua, Peekaboo Louise.
"I could live without a man, but I couldn't live without a dog," she said.
In the end, however, it was the sun that Ms. Ziese could not live without. She abandoned the mountain after heavy rains arrived Tuesday night, and she joined many others who had apparently re-evaluated their determination to wait for the next spectacle. By Wednesday morning, with St. Helens veiled in clouds and word of the lull in the rumblings spreading, the crowd on the mountain had thinned to only a few stubborn optimists.
Brian Landry, 48, from Salem, Ore., said news that the alert level had been lowered did not mean anything to him. "It might taper off and then all of a sudden decide to uncork," he said. Mr. Landry, a test-technician for a high-tech tool manufacturer, had driven two hours to get to the mountain on Sunday with his wife. He then drove her back home so she could work on Monday, turned around, and returned alone. He has now been here for three days straight, sleeping through Tuesday night's rain inside a blue tent and eating hot dogs.
"I'd hate to leave and find something went on," he said.
Great Views and Serenity at VolcanoBy ELI SANDERS
OUNT ST. HELENS NATIONAL VOLCANIC MONUMENT, Wash., Oct. 6 - They sit for hours, gazing across a mud-caked valley toward the rumbling mountain. Over the last week, since Mount St. Helens reawakened after almost two decades with a huge plume of steam, thousands have come here from across the West Coast and as far away as Texas.
They sleep in nearby hotels or up here in cars, camper-vans and mobile homes and in sleeping bags laid across the rocky soil - all waiting for the earth to reveal its intentions. They have motored up to this mountain carting digital cameras, barbecue grills, coolers, wine, romance novels, telescopes, all in a sort of pilgrimage to the place where, they say, the earth feels more alive - and so do they.
"At our age we're racing the clock," said Gayle Boren, 66, of Midlothian, Tex., who flew here to southwest Washington with her friend Opal French, 75, of Lubbock, Tex. "We're trying to do and see as much as we can before we die."
Like so many others up here who seem content to pass entire days staring at the mostly quiet mountain - as active as it looks on television, it really only erupts once in a while, and then for at most an hour at a time - the pair said they had come in search of a feeling.
They sat together on canvas chairs borrowed from a young couple nearby, under the shade of an alder tree near the Castle Lake Viewpoint, about eight miles from the mountain's crater. They explained the feeling they were after: a thrill that was as much about waiting for a volcano to erupt as it was about the sense of escape.
"It's something we can enjoy without someone being hurt," said Ms. Boren, who was staying at the Comfort Inn in Kelso, Wash.
It was taking their minds off presidential and vice-presidential debates (boring and predictable), they said, the news of the Iraq war and terrorism (depressing) and the 9/11 Commission Report (long, complicated and depressing). Ms. Boren brought the commission report with her up to the mountain but has so far decided not to read it.
There is a rhythm to the volcano-watching day. For those staying in nearby hotels, it begins with the latest reports on television, which on both Monday and Tuesday brought what they had been waiting for: word of eruptions, minor but dramatic. With each breathless broadcast new pilgrims come to the mountain.
For those already up here, some sleeping here for days now, the mountain had already delivered the news from across the valley and into the sky.
Scientists have for days been predicting a more serious eruption of the mountain, which in 1980 produced a large explosion that left 57 dead. But they now say it could take weeks, or may never happen, and after seismic tremors beneath the mountain's lava dome dropped off by Wednesday scientists lowered the volcanic alert level one notch, from "code red'' to "code orange."
The people up here seem to be finding something they need.
Colleen Grant, 46, of Coquitlam, British Columbia, said the experience was helping her get over those "control issues" her husband teases her about. Forced to surrender to geologic time while waiting for the big one, she found it calming, she said, and with a mixture of serenity and pleasant surprise, added, "We have no control."
On Sunday night, in honor of the reddish lava they hoped was rising from within the mountain, Ms. Grant, a lab technologist, and her husband, Rod, a caterer, drank merlot with barbecued steaks and prawns. Late Monday afternoon they sat on chairs atop a fake-grass mat outside their 22-foot mobile home. She was sipping white wine and he was working on a can of Coors.
"We're all here for the same common reason," Mr. Grant said.
By Tuesday afternoon, after three days on the mountain forced them to move from gourmet food to frozen fare, they had decided to leave. They said they were satisfied after seeing two steam explosions.
But a neighbor on the mountain, Judy Ziese, 55, a "retired housewife" from Port Angeles, Wash., said she would hold out for the big one, sleeping in her white Ford Expedition, which she was calling her "Ford Explosion."
Ms. Ziese's husband declined to join her on this trek more than 200 miles from home, so she packed up almond butter, jam, sprouted-wheat bread, string cheese and set out with her Chihuahua, Peekaboo Louise.
"I could live without a man, but I couldn't live without a dog," she said.
In the end, however, it was the sun that Ms. Ziese could not live without. She abandoned the mountain after heavy rains arrived Tuesday night, and she joined many others who had apparently re-evaluated their determination to wait for the next spectacle. By Wednesday morning, with St. Helens veiled in clouds and word of the lull in the rumblings spreading, the crowd on the mountain had thinned to only a few stubborn optimists.
Brian Landry, 48, from Salem, Ore., said news that the alert level had been lowered did not mean anything to him. "It might taper off and then all of a sudden decide to uncork," he said. Mr. Landry, a test-technician for a high-tech tool manufacturer, had driven two hours to get to the mountain on Sunday with his wife. He then drove her back home so she could work on Monday, turned around, and returned alone. He has now been here for three days straight, sleeping through Tuesday night's rain inside a blue tent and eating hot dogs.
"I'd hate to leave and find something went on," he said.
