Mighty nature

The news that Mount St. Helens is active again takes me right back to May 1980, when the volcano's catastrophic eruption made a big impression on nine-year-old me. There was a big feature about the eruption in Life magazine, and I remember thinking that the pictures of the exploding mountain looked a lot like hell. But I was confused by all the greyness and dust and ash: where was the red hot lava? Lava fascinated me. But Mount St. Helens wasn't that kind of volcano.

That summer my family visited friends in Centralia, Wash. My brother and I were delighted to see that their yard was coated with volcanic ash, and we scooped up as much as we could for a souvenir. We kept it in a margarine tub. What do you with volcanic ash? A couple of years later, I tried bagging the stuff and selling it a garage sale, but there were no takers.