Mount St. Helens and COVID-19

Forty years ago, when I moved to the Portland area from Bend, Mount Saint Helens had already begun rumbling. It didn’t seem to amount to much, and after a while had become something of a joke. You started seeing people wearing tee-shirts that said ‘I survived ‘Mount Saint Helens - April 1980’, and maybe had an image of a sad little steam plume urping out of a mountaintop.

I guess I’ve always had a bit of a morbid sense of humor. When the volcano blew on May 18, burying hundreds of square miles of timberland, and more than a few people, I couldn’t help but wonder out loud how many victims had been incinerated and buried in their ‘I survived Mount Saint Helens’ tee-shirts. I didn’t think it was funny – just ironic.

They say that ‘history doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes’. As people champ at the bit to get out and mingle, because they assume the worst of the current pandemic is behind us, it feels eerily familiar – the difference being, if they’re wrong, it’s not just them they put at risk; they will bring the volcano home with them, and incinerate their loved ones.