I was 18 months old when Mt. St. Helen's erupted and living in Portland, Oregon. So we saw a lot of ash, although I don't remember of course. It is one of my great regrets that I wasn't born earlier. These past few days of volcanic activity have been very exciting, I can only imagine what it would be like to witness the whole mountain pulverized into ash and see it cover your own yard.

My family having gotten used to the eruption as part of their life history treat it very nonchalantly. My mom has a bottle of ash from the yard somewhere in a cupboard, but she can't find it. This weekend at my "birthday party" (early since I will be living in Ghana on my actual birthday) I tried to delve into my families collective memories of the event. My mom and grandma both said they thought they'd have to move away, that Portland would be uninhabitable with the ash forever clogging up car's and gutters. They said that since the ash was dark, they couldn't see it falling from the sky, it just sort of appeared in the yard. The eruption went on for nine hours, can you imagine?

Eventually the ash did disappear of course. With the mountain acting up again lately, my mom contemplated the possibility of another eruption. Once every 24 years she thought wasn't so bad. Although there's almost no possibility it will erupt like it did in 1980, I mean, there's hardly any mountain left to blow up.

Although, there's also Mt. Hood another active volcano. It hasn't erupted since the 1790s and it has a nice pointy top that could go in a big way. The family thinks if that one goes it will be a much bigger catastrophe since more people leave on or near it.

In the Internet age I can monitor Mt. St. Helen's in near real time. Just this morning I checked the USGS volcano cam and saw that the volcano was emitting steam...once again. I also like to check the USGS earthquake activity website to find out how big the earthquakes on Mt. St. Helen's have been lately.

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