It’s gone. It’s all gone. The misty cathedrals of old growth fir, the deep sapphire lake, the little campgrounds nestled in the woods- they’re all gone. A way of life is gone too: quiet morning fishing on the polished glace of mountain water, the cabins, the smells of campfires, the big-knuckled loggers their hickory shirts and Can’t Bust ‘Em’s, the closeness with the land that was more than closeness. The land was part of you and you were part of it. Its rhythms and ways were your rhythms and ways. Gone, all gone. The world that existed around Mount St. Helens 20 years ago hasn’t changed per se, because the world change connotes some sort of evolu-tionary process that leaves trace of itself behind. In large areas around the mountain there are no traces of the world that existed before May 18, 1980. Further away where people live, there are traces, but just that.

The animals didn’t stand a chance. They had no one to order them away from the blast zone. The plants were rooted in place. The state estimates 7,000 elk, deer, and bear were killed along with untold numbers of smaller animals. About 4 billion broad feet of timber were blown down. “We lost the old days in one quick flash,” said Mark Smith, whose family owned sprit lake lodge at the base of the mountain. “Actually, it’s probably the best way to lose one’s old days. It makes nostalgia irrelevant. Some of us have some to accept that, some have not. “In purely pragmatic terms, it doesn’t really matter how much you respond to it. It’s done.”

Peninsula Daily News, May 7th, 2000