Of All the Mysterys of Life, Geological Time is the Hardest to Comprehend 

By Barry Murray

Part 1 of 3

I have been a freelance magazine photographer/writer since the 1950’s, and — following the discipline of “pictures are words, and words are pictures”— usually can start a long explanation of what I had already photographed, easily. Sorry, when it comes to Mt. St. Helens I actually choke up if reporting in the ‘third person’ — which is why I am slipping in to the no-no of, “I.” As in “I witnessed” Sleeping Beauty explode. The reason my picture of the “big” eruption is not on page one, above, is that I did not have a camera along that fateful May 18, 1980.

Taking a Sunday morning goof-off time I was piloting a pre-WWII Stinson airplane, logging some “taildragger” time off a grass strip at Evergreen Airport, Vancouver, Washington. All I was really doing in this slow flying machine, that I remember as only having three instruments, was practicing power-off stalls with wings that seemed to belong on a glider.

Suddenly I noticed a small dark cloud ahead in a clear blue sky. Then I decided it was a thunderhead. As this aircraft had no radio aboard I actually flew on, straight towards Mt. St. Helens, only 28-miles as a Stinson flys.

The the cloud grew, and grew, and grew —fortunately to the NW away from Vancouver — and soon the morning had disappeared into an early twilight. Totally scared, I dove south for the safety of a rural pasture, and scooted over trees to finally reached a place I could borrow a camera. I was all set to take-off once again when I got the word the airspace was closed. Drat.

After the pumice ash had settled I attempted to drive back-country U.S. Forest Service roads I had hiked as trails in my youth, to reach Meta Lake to make-up for a photographic deficiency. This access too, for my own safety, was closed.

So you will have to deal with an old-man returning to the land of his youth, trying to comprehend in geological time what had happened in his lifetime. Log cabins, as the Chicago Mine structure shown here on a teenage Peter, Paul, and Barry 10-day backpack in the 50’s, are known to disappear over time. What wasn’t expected —including an access road— was to see the “miner’s” car parked at the Chicago Pass trail head, totally flattened by the St. Helens blast.

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