Blowing up mountains
From the window I can see three mountains: Hood, Adams, St. Helens. They're all quite lovely at a distance. I don't know much about them.
Mt. St. Helens, of course, erupted in 1980. I was two years old, so of course don't remember it. I relate it, though, to a memory of Augustine erupting in 1986, and blanketing Anchorage, less than two hundred miles away, in a layer of ash. Later, I remember watching a television news program about the St. Helens eruption; I found it recorded on a VHS in my grandparents' video library. The program showed how St. Helens blew apart its own slope in the eruption. It shared footage of people who died, including Harry Truman, the resident who wouldn't leave, and David Johnston, a USGS volcanlogist.
A friend of mine takes beautiful photographs of Mt. Hood. It's also the site of what is supposedly the only reported human death by cougar in Oregon. (The wiki entry on fatalities by cougar, however, lists an 1868 report of a death in Lane County, Oregon, so...hrm.) Anyway, that's what I know about Mt. Hood. It isn't much!
But I know the least about Adams. It's...called Adams. It's a volcano, too, I think, and an active one. If it and St. Helens erupt, we'll have a great view, at least until the ash fallout buries our house.
