This month marks the 40th anniversary of the Mount St. Helens eruption, which reverberated throughout the Pacific Northwest and around the world. If you can’t go to Mount St. Helens right now, you can still read about it, see an art exhibit centering on it, attend a virtual discussion or presentation about it, and listen to a symphony inspired by it.
To read:
Here are four new books, all published this spring, that reflect on the May 18, 1980, eruption.
“After the Blast: The Ecological Recovery of Mount St. Helens” (University of Washington Press, 264 pages, $29.95). Author Eric Wagner takes a lively, enthusiastic look at the post-eruption landscape from the perspective of ecologists who seized the opportunity to track “how life responds to a massive disturbance, how it recovers from one, or how it does not.” Wagner smartly tells this story through the eyes of individual scientists and researchers and their work with species that turned out to be unexpectedly resilient and that challenged longtime models and premises.
“Ground Truth: A Geological Survey of a Life” (Overcup Press, 212 pages, $15.95). Chapters on Mount St. Helens bookend this poignant memoir by Oregon geologist Ruby McConnell, who deftly braids together geography, culture and personal history. Ultimately, this is an ode to the Pacific Northwest and its people.
Wagner and McConnell will appear in a free reading and discussion webinar, “A Discussion of Post-Eruption Recovery and Resilience,” from 6-7 p.m. Friday, May 15. Registration is requested.
“Memories of Mount St. Helens” (The History Press, 144 pages, $21.99). Jim Erickson, a journalist who covered the eruption for the Tacoma News Tribune, takes a local and regional perspective in looking back on the mountain’s history, the frenzied days surrounding the eruption, and its aftermath. The book features archival photos.
“Crater & Tower” (Duck Lake Books, 82 pages, $15.99). In her new poetry collection, Cheryl J. Fish, who was in lower Manhattan when the World Trade Center towers fell in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, draws parallels between that disaster and the eruption of Mount St. Helens, tracing connections between the victims, the preventable and the unpreventable, the magnitude of bearing witness, and the fallout.
To see:
The Portland Art Museum opened its exhibit “Volcano! Mount St. Helens in Art” on Feb. 8 and had planned to keep it up through May 17; the exhibit has since been extended. “We expect to keep it on view until January 2021,” said museum spokesman Ian Gillingham. The museum, closed due to the pandemic, has not yet set a date for reopening.
In the meantime, the exhibit can be viewed online. The museum’s YouTube Channel features a video tour narrated by curator Dawson Carr, The Janet and Richard Geary Curator of European Art at the museum. Both the online exhibit and the video tour include glimpses of pastels by the late Portland author Ursula K. Le Guin, who reveled in having a view of the mountain from her home.
The museum’s director of learning and community partnerships, Stephanie Parrish, has organized these complementary events, among others:
“Ask Us Anything” on Reddit: Scientists and volcano experts answer questions from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Tuesday, May 12, on the social media platform Reddit. Get the link from the event’s Facebook page on Tuesday.
Bill Nye: The television host teams up with the Mount St. Helens Institute for a 40th anniversary observation titled “Mount St. Helens Goes Boom!” It starts at 6 p.m. Saturday, May 16, on Facebook and YouTube. For details, go to the Mount St. Helens Institute website, mshinstitute.org.
Virtual Story Circle: Voices of the Mount St. Helens Community: This Washington State Parks event features a ranger program, first-person stories about the mountain, and a volcano hat craft (you’ll need paper or card stock; tape, a stapler or a glue stick; and crayons, markers, colored pencils or paint). It runs from 6:30-8 p.m. Monday, May 18, at facebook.com/historymuseum/live.
OMSI Virtual Science Pub: Research geologist Heather Wright presents “Mount St. Helens Rocked Our World! What We’ve Learned Since 1980” from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Monday, May 18, on the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry’s Facebook Live page and YouTube channel.
“Mount St. Helens & the Cascade Range Volcanoes”: Four Northwest scientists review Cascadia Region tectonics, volcanic hazards, and how science and monitoring have evolved since the eruption. The program, hosted by the University of Washington’s Pacific Northwest Seismic Network, starts at 6:30 p.m. Monday, May 18, on the network’s YouTube channel.
The Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture in Spokane opened the exhibit “Mount St. Helens: Critical Memory 40 Years Later” in December. It’s scheduled to run through Sept. 6, so there’s a chance it might be viewable again soon. Meanwhile, the museum has posted a virtual gallery talk, “Behind the Scenes of Spirit Lake,” to its YouTube channel.
To listen:
The eruption inspired American composer Alan Hovhaness’ three-movement Symphony No. 50 “Mount St. Helens,” recorded by the Seattle Symphony. The first movement, the majestic “Andante,” summons images of a powerful peak. Bells fill the meditative second movement, “Spirit Lake: Allegro.” The final movement, “Volcano: Adagio – Allegro,” offers an orchestral rendition of the blast.
awang@oregonian.com; Twitter: @ORAmyW
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