Two months ago Hyacinth and I were on a plane headed for Seattle. She was warm, wrapped in her blanket. I looked out the window while she slept against my chest, next to my beating heart. The land was flat and brown beneath; the winter snows had not yet arrived on the prairie. As we sped along our journey the land spread out below for hundreds of miles. Sometimes it seems like you can see the entire world from a plane. I know this particular journey well. I’ve seen it from the air. I’ve seen in from the ground. I’ve seen it in summer and winter, backwards and forwards. If the weather is clear, like it was on that day two months ago, I am able to mark the passage of time simply by the looking out the window at the scenery below. The lakes of Minnesota give way to the drier country of the Dakotas. These are bisected by the Missouri River. Patience, patience, the land will turn green again with the approach of the Rockies in Montana. They end in Idaho, and then we will be closer to home. I will feel the plane begin its oh-so gradual decline throughout Eastern Washington, brown land again far below. We’ll cross the Columbia River at the tiny town of Vantage and then fly over the Cascade Range. The eastern slope of the Cascades is gradual, so gradual that you can hardly tell that you are going up. But you will be awakened to the mountains on the western slope, a steep decline from mountain pass to sea level in just a few miles. At the bottom of this steep hill is Seattle; we are home.
This particular journey was special. Hyacinth and I were surprising my father on his 80th birthday – a pleasant, loving surprise. Just days before I’d been given the unpleasant surprise that Hyacinth’s spleen was sporting a tumor that was rapidly filling her body cavity. Her days were numbered and I was in emotional shock. I had not yet taken her to the specialists who would remove tumor, spleen and all in a vain attempt to save her. I had not made any decisions about anything yet. I vacillated in disbelief. The ipod I brought along to occupy me during the journey sat unused in my lap, next to my snoring child. The music made my cry and I could not fix my mind on the video. My mind would not stay where I placed it; it kept returning to Hyacinth. With my attempts at diversion unsuccessful, I simply looked out the window, towards the south, as the scenery went by and let the salty water quietly exit my eyes.
Finally, the Cascade Range began to come into view through my little porthole. These mountains have been a part of my life, as they have been for all the other sons and daughters of the Northwest, who grew up in their shadows. On clear days my parents would point to each of them and say their names in turn, so I know them well. From my perch in the heavens I could see the face of each, popping out from the clouds below. The biggest, most familiar friend was still obscured by the wing of the plane. I knew that I need only wait for Mt. Rainier to fill the southbound window as we drew near. For the time I contented myself with greeting the others. Mt. Adams, Mt. Saint Helens, pointed Mt. Hood in Oregon. Was that Mt. Shasta, small but distinctive, way off in the distance? Could I see all the way to California from up here? Yes, I could. The pilot came on over the tinny loudspeaker and verified my perceptions, naming each mountain for the uninitiated as my parents did for me so long ago. The thought of my expansive vision took my breath away. How small Mt. Shasta looked. How large it must be for me to be able to see it! The contradiction was jarring and beautiful and mysterious. I shifted in my seat and gently lifted Hyacinth’s face to the window. She looked out, unimpressed and began to snore again. Her world was here and now, in my arms, not in faraway California. I held her closer, loving her even more.I didn’t think about it at the time, but I used to know a man who is buried on Mt. Shasta. He was the uncle of a friend. When I was in graduate school I watched his cat while he was away in California visiting his adult children. The cat was named Screech, a fat Persian that made a strange screeching sound instead of the usual Meow. The man had his own small plane, and he often flew to California. Much later, on another trip, the man became lost in an unexpected storm and crashed his plane into Mt. Shasta. I followed the stories on the internet from my office in Minnesota. The locals could see his plane with binoculars, perched on the edge of a shelf of deep and unstable new snow that had fallen in the storm. Rescue helicopters could not land, and their heat-detecting life sensors made no sound. Perhaps the brave would-be rescuers would have tried harder had there been any sign of life. But there was nothing living in the snow below. The newspaper stories continued for some weeks, as the authorities impotently wrung their hands and looked at the precariously-perched airplane with a dead body inside. And then the newspapers went as quite as the mountain, as they so often do when reporting someone else’s tragedy. For all I know, the body of the man is still there, long since abandoned to the mountain, buried in a tomb of ice and snow. The mountains are tricky things. They look pleasant and inviting when the sun is shining on their faces, but they can turn angry and menacing when the clouds roll in. Like the Old Testament God, they demand respect - and sometimes in a fit of anger they severely punish even minor offenses like carelessness and bad luck.
My grief is like one of these mountains, it is unpredictable and punishing. The death of the one who was so dear to me was like a shattering, jarring eruption – tectonic plates smashing together and pushing up an angry, raw, jagged piece of land. The fault line of my world cracked. I never really appreciated before, just how fragile it was underneath the surface. But now I know. The world of my heart is a different place than it was before; now there are mountains on the landscape. I have grown older and wiser. I can appreciate the danger and uncertainty that makes life especially precious. I know that the landscape will continue to change and evolve, jutting upward and eroding down until I too return to the dust, perhaps leaving mountains behind on someone else’s heart.
I was 16 years old in May of 1980, as my friend Bitsy and I watched Mt. Saint Helens erupt. We sat at her house, perched atop the southern edge of Queen Anne Hill, a small house nestled between the mansions. It’s no longer there. It was replaced long ago with a shiny, sturdy, three-story home designed to take full advantage of the spectacular view. But in 1980 Bitsy’s house was still there, Bitsy was my best friend, and Mt. Saint Helens was erupting. From our vantage point it looked like nothing more than a single, small black pencil line drawn onto the sky. To us it was a curiosity. Our homes were not in the path of the horrible blast that mowed down the trees and choked the Toutle River. The ash did not settle on Seattle – that went due east with the wind. The eruption of Mt. Saint Helens didn’t mean that much to us, really. We watched it with interest and detachment at the same time. The pencil line of ash unfolded like an image on the screen while we watched with the eager anticipation of those who are not be directly affected by what they observe. People died, animals died, trees died. All this happened while we pointed and watched and marveled. When we left the theater of Bitsy’s rooftop, our lives would go back to normal.
A year later my friend Bitsy and I went away to college together. Our path along I-5 took us past the southwestern slope of the volcano, and the eruption became a bit more real to us. One whole half of the great lady was simply blown away. Helen didn’t blow up, she blew out. Spirit Lake, where I picked blueberries once as a child, was simply gone. Harry Truman, not the president but the eccentric old man who lived along the shores of Spirit Lake and who refused to evacuate when the warnings came; he was no more as well. Silly old man. My 17 year old brain was incapable of understanding his unwillingness to accept the change and move on with the living. I understand a bit more now.
As we drove back and forth, between college and home, we saw the piles of gray ash grow along the sides of the freeway, as the rivers were cleared and the local people attempted to return to normal. On a clear day you could still see a bit of steam escaping the mountain. Now, 27 years later, I look upon the volcano again from 30,000 feet. I see no steam now. She is covered in snow. I recognize her by her noticeably flat top – the flat top she gained when she blew out rather than up. I am able to identify her because of her eruption so long ago; it left a distinctive mark on her character that changed her appearance forever. But the violence of the eruption is hidden now, covered over, somewhat healed. She is no longer black and jagged and steamy. She has nestled back into her range, normal again, but changed forever. The snow has fallen and the snow has melted. New streams and rivers have cut furrows along her face like tears. Her tears have smoothed the jagged edges and life has returned to her slopes, small grasses and flowers at first and, by now, majestic trees. The forces of nature that left her gaping and raw come from the same source as those that have smoothed and healed her. Destruction and rebirth are simply the natural order.
I am reminded of Hyacinth again. The emotional eruption of her death was like the eruption of the mountain. It was violent, black, and steamy. It was like a jagged cut that fractured my soul and left me numb and gaping at its power. I was helpless as it mowed down everything in its path. It didn’t blow up, it blew out; knocking my feet out from under me, yanking the carpet. For the first few days my life felt like St. Helen’s ash; floating, unreal, blown about by each passing breeze. But now, like the mountain, I am settling in. Winter gives way to spring which gives way to winter again. Freeze, thaw; freeze, thaw. Streams of tears have flown down my face, have dried, and have flown again. They smooth away the most prominent jagged edges, but the mountain of longing remains. I believe that I will always miss her, and that I have been unalterably changed. The power of the eruption, and the healing that follows, is as much a part of nature as the mountain. My emotional experience, the very person that I am, is subject to the same forces that shape the landscape below.
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