To camp with kids makes me question my sanity. I crush tasks. Setting up the tent, laying out the bedding, stacking coolers on a bench. The picnic tables are skeined with leaves after a season of rain. I peel and drape their skeletal outlines over a nurse log. Forest doilies. We brought bikes. Our sons pop wheelies in the parking lot, safer than it sounds because few campers have braved late spring at Seaquest State Park.
On the drive along Spirit Lake Highway to Mount St. Helens, the houses are few and well-priced. I marvel; Brian scoffs. That’s because this whole place was destroyed forty years ago. Having timed our trip to the eruption’s anniversary, we ascend through what had been a trail of devastation. Once seared by lahars, the landscape has greened into a wildlife corridor that winds around the Toutle River.
Scientists didn’t think life would come back this fast. Scant weeks after the blast, fireweed poked its green head through the ash, sending purple flowers skyward by July of 1980. The next year, I was born. We don’t always know where hope resides. I spent four decades guarding a secret. Quietude is a fertile state. Sure, I published hundreds of articles with my byline. But I rarely disclosed my own truths.