Ash, Steam and Volcano Dust

So we've been back on Illinois soil for 25 hours now. I've had a little time to think about the experiences I shared with my wife in America's great northwest. Some trips are just so relaxing, so enchanted, so needed that they are just hard to come back from. This was one of those trips. But you always have to come home and we did. It is still hot and muggy. Our little town is still recovering from a good storm-bashing from a month ago. After 23 years this place has become home in a way that I never expected when I moved here. God has allowed us to put down roots that most youth pastor's never experience. Our kids grew up in one place. I am grateful for that. If our time here ends next month, next year, or next decade I will have to say that He has been very gracious to us. I have no complaints.

Anyway ...

There was a three hour period of our trip that Debbie and I did not share. It happened on Monday. That is the day we drove back to Mt. St. Helen's. It was a stunningly clear day and after kissing my bride at the Johnston Ridge Memorial Observatory I set out on a solo hike. My tools were few. A sweatshirt over my arm, a pair of New Balance sneakers on my feet, an ipod playing in my ears and a bottle of water lodged in the leg pocket of my cargo shorts.

Looking into the crater of the volcano was shocking. The observatory is six miles from the center of the hole where the new "lava dome" is rapidly building. At the rate it is growing it will restore the mountain to its original height in a mere one hundred years. That's not very long in geological years. A very thin and steady stream of ash and steam floats straight up from the dome most of the time. If the missing top and sides of the mountain are not reminder enough, this steam keeps the fact that this is an active volcano in the forefront of your mind. St. Helen's has been in a state of eruption since 2004. Hiking to the rim was banned until about two weeks ago. Now it is limited to, I believe, one hundred people a day and a maximum of twelve in any one hiking expedition. Oddly, the climbers begin from the back side, the south side, of the mountain rather than from the north side where the open hole reveals the gory results of the May 18, 1980 eruption to the world. I am certain there is a reason. I do not know what it is.

My plan was to hike as close to the opening as I could get without leaving the trail. To do so results in a fine of at least $100. And there is always the possibility that you could get lost, injured, swallowed up by some unforgiving crevice or, yes, killed by doing so. I was very satisfied by the trail.

As you leave Johnston Ridge you walk up a rather steep incline on a paved walk way. That is just to hook you. It lures you in. After you reach the top of the first ridge the asphalt vanishes and is replaced by a wide and well maintained trail that turns toward the mountain. There are signs at this point reminding you of the appropriate response to an ash fall. Not to worry though. It will never happen. It's just a wisp of steam. A tiny bit of ash. There is not much going on. Less than a quarter mile down this trail you will find a marble (granite?) memorial to those who were killed in the big eruption. I found the names of David A. Johnston, the geologist manning the ridge when it blew. He was decimated after shouting his final words into his radio ... "Vancouver! Vancouver! This is it!" He was hit by a 300mph blast of super-heated gas, ash, and rock. They never found him. A forest service employee told me that they did find small remains of his trailer. Sadly, David was the man who predicted the eruption and he had not even been staffing the observation point. The man who was happened to be called away for a day and David agreed to take his place. As you might have guessed, that day was the day of the huge explosion that forever changed the face of the region as well as the way scientists study volcano's. I also saw the name of Harry Truman. You may remember him from a made-for-tv movie back in the 80's. The movie portrayed him as a grizzly, stubborn old mountain man who refused to leave his lodge at Spirit Lake. Locals will tell you that the truth is he was quite the entrepreneur in reality. He would not leave because he was concerned about what someone would do to his place in his absence. He was afraid of the mountain but he stayed. The ranger told me that he probably had enough time to turn and look over his shoulder when the mountain blew before his life ended. I'm telling you ... this is a wild place.

As I hiked on I had my eyes on the fragmented mountain. It is very hard to take your eyes off of it. I had my ipod tuned to "shuffle" and music praising the eternal God, maker of mountains filled my head. I walked and I prayed. The wide and maintained walk way tapered off into a discernible but definitely non-maintained trail. When it did I saw the final sign of my journey. It told me that to go any further was a serious decision. If you are afraid of heights, concerned about your physical abilities, or apt to panic in tough terrain you should not go any further. I did what any red blooded male would do. I took a picture of the sign to show everybody when I got back.

I kept walking. I came across a bench with an almost shocking view. I could now see all of the growing lava dome from my new vantage point. I sat for a few minutes and stared, trying to imagine what it looked like to be in that spot all of those years ago. Some strange form of flying insects were buzzing around the area. They made a rattling sound. At first I mistook the sound for a possible rattle snake. That scared me more than the volcano did. And then one of the flying creatures landed on my shoe and started its rattling. I shook it off and ceased to worry about slithering reptiles. I don't think there are rattle snakes in Washington state but I don't want to bet my life on it.

I stood and began walking again. My trail map placed me more than a mile and a half from the observatory. I walked on. Then I walked so more. And then a bit further. I can only guess that I had walked somewhat more than three miles at this point when I came across a large rock. The trail beyond this point turned toward the east, somewhat away from the mountain. It followed a ridge line that appeared to have its view of St. Helen's blocked. I decided that this was probably as close as I could get. My map showed that the trail would split after the walk across the ridge. A right turn at that split would take me directly onto the apron areas of the land slide in front of the mountain. A glance at my watch told me that if I continued on that far I would not be able to return to the visitor's center by their closing time. That would get me in trouble with the rangers and especially with my wife. And so I took my hooded Centrifuge sweat shirt, folded it up, and used it as a cushion on the boulder at the edge of the trail.

And I sat. In stillness. In silence. I could hear the wind whipping through the valley, the rattling of the insects, and pretty much nothing else. I had not seen any other people for roughly the last mile. I do not know if anybody was on the trail beyond me or not but it did not matter. I was ending my treck here.

And I stared. Mt. St. Helen's commands your full attention. It is just too much to take in. A broken mountain. A shattered forest. A river valley buried under 650 feet of pumice and boulders.

And I prayed. I asked God if He wanted to do in my life what He had done to that mountain. Is it time for Him to rock my world? Are there false faces that He needs to blow away? Does He want to expose me to the heat of His inspection and burn away old growth in order to allow new growth to take place?

Silence. No response.

I reached to my pocket and tuned my ipod to the Psalms. I told it to read the scriptures to me in whatever random order it would choose. I asked God to program it to pour into my soul what He desired that I hear. I was listening to Psalm 97 when it happened. I had been staring into the moon-like valley. As I glanced back to the mountain my mouth went dry. My pulse began to race. The small and steady stream of ash had grown into a large and moving plume. It was moving downward and quickly covered the entire lava dome. In retrospect it does not look like much in the pictures. In person? In person it was an entirely different story. The steam and ash kept coming. I began snapping pictures. I turned on my cell phone to see if I had a signal. I had a weak one and I called Debbie's cell to make sure she was seeing this from the visitor's center. She did not answer and so I left a message. (She told me later that people began panicking and running away when the eruption started. The rangers took bull horns and told them to stop running and start taking pictures because they would likely never see this again.) I put my phone back in my pocket and sat stunned on my rock. That is when the words from Psalm 97 penetrated my own fog. I heard the Word of God say, "The mountains take one look at God and melt, melt like wax before earth's Lord. The heavens announce the He'll set everything right, and everyone will see it happen - glorious!" (Psalm 97: 5 - 6.) I remember thinking, "God burped the mountain for me."

All too soon the mini-eruption ceased. The cloud lifted out of the crater, floated above the mountain and formed into a small band of clouds heading eastward. I began a slow walk back to the visitor's center. I had been gone nearly 2.5 hours. After a while I came across a Park Service Ranger. She was walking in the direction I was coming from. She asked if I had seen the eruption. I showed her the pictures on my camera. We walked to a nearby bench, one of two I had seen on the trail, and she spent the better part of thirty minutes giving me a first hand description of what I was looking at on the mountain, in the valley, and to my left at the famous Spirit Lake. There is no space to write it all here but rest assured, when God wants a mountain to melt ... He does a very good job of making it happen.

After our conversation she asked me if I had seen anybody further up the trail. I told her that I had not, thanked her for the guided tour, and began my walk back to Debbie and the Johnston Ridge Memorial Observatory. It was an amazing day.

Two days later I was still finding ash and pumice in my hair when I washed it in the mornings.

It was an amazing day with an amazing God. And yes, He spoke to me. The eruption was a gift. It had nothing to do with what He told me. Neither did the worship songs I tuned in to. Neither did the reading of the Psalms. But He addressed my questions and dilemma's specifically and in a way I did not expect. I am not ready to tell you about that. Maybe some day. Maybe not. For now it is between my God and I.

And now, roughly 100 hours after my own personal volcanic eruption, something occurs to me for the first time. The Words of God spoken softly and quietly within my own spirit are of far great worth than a close-up and personal view of a mangled mountain and hot lava spewing up from the depths of the earth. Yes, it was worth the drive back down from Seattle to see the crater. And yes, it was awe inspiring to see the eruption. But hearing God's voice? Nothing is better than that.

As a side light, we had just taken off from SeaTac airport in Seattle yesterday morning and had not even approached cruising altitude when I glanced out the window of our 737. It was cloudy in Seattle when we took off and was still cloudy now about twenty minutes later. I noticed a few mountain peaks in the distance but I paid no attention because right in front of me. to the right of the jet, close enough that I felt like I could reach out the window and touch it ... was the ridge, crater and lava dome of Mt. St. Helen's. They were rising above the clouds as though they wanted to say a quick "good-bye" before we got too far away. And oddly, there was not even a tiny stream of rising ash this time.

How good is God anyway?

(For more pictures of my hike and the mountain go to www.flickr.com/photos/rotola and click on the "Seattle 2006" link." To see live pictures from the web came at the Johnston Ridge Memorial Observatory go to http://www.fs.fed.us/gpnf/volcanocams/msh/ )