https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/..._of_Mount_St._Helens

I was at the library downtown working on a paper since the end of the school year was approaching. I remember coming home on the bus everyone was talking about "it blew".

There were a lot of trees around us, so I couldn't see it from the house, but I went down to the freeway overpass a mile south and could see the ash cloud about 75 miles away. We got a very fine sprinkling of ash.

Eastern Washington got covered.

57 people died.


Nine years ago I met up with Clan OT and we drove up to the observation center. It was too cloudy to see the mountain -- or what remains of it. I'll find some pictures later today.

It's fair to say that had St. Helens not erupted, my life would be a lot different today.

Mr. Nina and I had been dating, but I moved to Seattle to go to UW in August 1979 and I think we both just assumed that was that. But after the eruption he was one of the first in for research, and found himself spending a lot of time there over the next year or so. It's only about 2 hours from Seattle to one of the I-5 staging areas, so we were able to see a lot of each other. The rest, as they say, is history.