Notes from the Road - Day 14

2/12/04 10:20pm Seaside, OR

I went to sleep relatively easy last night once the kids were asleep, but since I was in no hurry I didn’t get up until almost 9:00am. Joe’s fiancé made breakfast: sausage, eggs, and waffles, all good. The kids are obviously a handful, but they clearly enjoy each other. Still, I knew it was time to move on. They have enough to take care of without me.

I planned on meeting Mary for lunch in Portland, where she works, but I put off calling her. Instead, I backtracked a little to the Mount St. Helens stop from yesterday so I could get a better idea of its history. I figured, “When’s the next time I’ll get a chance to see this?” I vaguely remembered the eruption from May 1980, or at least hearing about it shortly afterwards. The center was very educational and alarming, concerning all the population centers that have sprung up around the possibly active volcanoes in this range, which is part of the “ring of fire” lining the Pacific Ocean.

I took the path through some of the marshlands that now make up Silver Lake, which was permanently altered when the north face of the volcano collapsed. The most impressive analogy for the resulting eruption was that the power released was the equivalent of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima exploding every minute for 24 hours. I hadn’t realized the blast came out sideways instead of vertically, so that the lateral force knocked down forests for miles. The tales of survival in the 25-minute film they played are pretty amazing. One logger out of a group of four survived being buried alive under the forest and burned by the heat blast. A man and woman rode a river of logs running down a swollen river where they’d been fly-fishing. As tragic as the events were, at some point you have to admit the idiocy of these people, simply in order to make it unacceptable for others to think the same way. They’d been warned repeatedly to evacuate the area, and they took their chances when others had fled.

By the time I finished with the walk it was almost time for supper, although I hadn’t had lunch. I was afraid I’d be lunch for the bugs that were buzzing about, but I guess they weren’t mosquitoes after all, since I don’t appear to be bitten. I naively believed there wouldn’t be any bugs yet since it’s February, but it was 60 degrees in the daytime, so they were waking up. I called Mary and she suggested Joe’s Crab Shack. After mistaking one river for another due to crossing an island, I finally found the place. They had a great crab dip with nachos. I really enjoyed hearing details about my grandparents, as I always do from people who knew them. Mary remembers my dad's mother as a “spitfire”. She says there’s a genealogy of her family line tracing them back to Scotland, and she’ll e-mail me info on it.

I broke my own rule and drove in the dark to get to Seaside after 7:00pm. The forest reminded me of Indiana, thick woods through hilly country. Tomorrow, I’ll hit the beach, hopefully on a 4-wheeler.