Mt. Saint Helens Eruption 20th Anniversary – NWPR

(Keith Ronnholm / Seattle Times archive)

I was six years old in 1980 when the eruption occurred, but I was fascinated from my location in the Midwest. A few years later we would visit a distant relative in Moses Lake, WA, about 100 miles east, and was given a jar full of ash from a mound that was present in her backyard.

Later in that summer trip we would visit the mountain which is much as one of my subjects in the story describes, it was a moonscape. The following year I would win a blue ribbon in the science fair for a presentation about the eruption.

In 2000, I was still a newcomer to the Northwest so I was keen to explore how the region had changed two decades after the event. It was exhilarating to have a chance so many years later to dive deeply into a story that had left an indelible impression on me.