According to pictures I saw, the old-growth forest surrounding Mount Saint Helens was quite beautiful.
Now, the forest is buried under dozens of feet of the decades-hardened volcanic phlegm that rushed down the mountain in 1980, and instead of tall, sturdy trees standing in lush undergrowth around the base of the mountain, there are shattered, age-bleached trunks scattered like so many toothpicks on the hillsides for miles around what is now a gouged-out national monument, a thousand feet or so shorter than it used to be.
I had planned on spending a day at Mount Saint Helens, and I'm kind of glad I didn't spend the whole day there. Not by myself, at least. It was too eerie.
If you want to feel the desolation of an area obliterated by a volcano - even one as popular as Mount Saint Helens - just visit on a weekday afternoon in the middle of October. It's pretty easy to imagine how quiet and weird it would have been there in the aftermath ...
On my twilight drive along the 50-mile road back to civilization, I passed a scruffy-looking hitchhiker, and after five miles of internal self-argument, compassion won out.
That's how I met Christopher from Ireland, a gardener who just wants to see America. His goal is to make it to San Deigo before mid-November, when his return flight is scheduled. I dropped him off a bit closer to civilization to find a place to pitch his tent (and not get arrested for it).
Good luck, Christopher. As the first hitchhiker I ever picked up, you turned out to be OK. I'm really glad you weren't an axe murderer.
