1980

Energy crisis. Hostage situation. Streisand in the top 40. 1980 had its low points.

But it also had the Miracle on Ice. It had "Another One Bites the Dust".

And it had Mount St. Helens.

I wish that I had some super-cool story of high adventure, romance, and/or personal discovery that I could tie to the eruption, but unfortunately there was very little high adventure, romance, or personal discovery for me on that day (kinda depressing that things are in the same boat 26 years later).

Here are some things that I wish would have happened:

-- I was riding my bike to the market and the eruption hit... I couldn't really hear anything, but I could feel it. The air got still and the ash started to fall. I pulled my bike over to the side of the road and realized, for the first time, that I was experiencing something that I'd never forget.

-- I was up early to check my traps when my husky mix Wolf perked his ears and stuck his nose up in the air. I knew something strange was about to happen. I heard a low rumbling and suddenly through the trees burst dozens of deer... after tracking these silent creatures for so long, I stood in awe as they abandoned their normally graceful demeanor and fled, as if for their lives. A moment after I saw the herd I saw the smoke, the burning trees, and the red hot magma as it slowly, inexorably, crept down the hillside. I grabbed my musket, whistled for Wolf, and began a slow trot towards the settlement to warn the others.

-- I'd been up for 36 hours. Some poor kid had decided to wrap his Cortina Mk IV around a telephone pole and the thing had sent sent glass and metal into the various body parts of a group of Korean tourists who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. When they were brought into my ER even those that were awake and capable of speaking quickly proved incapable of speaking English. There aren't many times I am glad for my tours in the "police action" (lost too many friends and too much of my youth) but this was one of them. Just when we were through patching up the auto accident aftermath, and just when I was about to head back to my place to curl up to a bottle and try to forget my life, St. Helens blew. I looked at Cindy, put out my cigarette, and got ready to go back to saving lives.

What really happened is I remember going outside and thinking that it was cool that there was snow on the ground. But snow that wasn't white and wasn't cold. I was kind of a simple kid (kinda depressing that things are in the same boat 26 years later).