Word: mountainous
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Above this devastation towers the still threatening mountain itself. Because the explosion literally blew the top off Mount St. Helens, its height has been reduced from 9,677 ft. to 8,300. Its shape has changed from a symmetrical, Fujiyama-like cone to a lopsided pyramid that resembles a broken tooth. Occasionally it still puffs smoke and steam...
Only two months after the eruption, small green parsley ferns and skunk cabbage were found pushing through the volcanic ash in sheltered areas along a creek on the mountain slope. Now the pink flowers of fireweed, a low-growing bush that is traditionally one of the first plants to colonize disturbed areas, have begun to add a touch of color to slopes and clear areas, still covered with ash and mud. Lupines are beginning to grow along erosion channels. Tiny fir trees, freed from competition with their fallen parents, are expected to take advantage of the extra sunlight and make...
Another threatened species, Homo sapiens, appears to be re-establishing itself as tenaciously as the lichens that grow on the mountain's rocks. A few people fled the area after last year's eruption, too nervous to stay or too stunned and depressed to rebuild their disrupted lives. A handful of local loggers and their families emigrated to Alaska to avoid having to live near the volcano. But most are making money cleaning up. Tom Henderson, a foreman of a team of loggers working to salvage what might be as much as $50 million worth of downed timber...
...leave but canceled when the rush of tourists kept property values from plummeting. Everyone hopes to cash in this summer when an army of tourists - officials say it may exceed 3 million - marches in. Welby Spainhower of Ridgefield has a trailer-housed store with a view of the mountain and a stock that includes ballpoint pens filled with ash, 48 types of T shirts, and a record titled Ashfall. Clara Ottosen of Silverlake has converted a barn into a museum filled with Helenic artifacts, including the burned-out Volvo in which National Geographic Photographer Reid Blackburn was interred...
...keeping quiet. But will it? Geologists are reluctant to forecast the future. Reconstructing last year's disaster with readings from seismographs and tiltmeters - which measure the swelling of the earth's surface - scientists have determined that the eruption was triggered by a magnitude5 earthquake that shook the mountain on May 18, the day of the volcano. The tremor dislodged a flank of the mountain already swollen from rising semimolten rock. A huge hunk of the mountain rumbled downhill like a great sliding door, uncovering rock saturated with compressed gases. Exposed to the air, the gases exploded. Geologists...