Mount Saint Helens

 While we were camping we took a day to drive up for a look at Mount Saint Helens.  In 1980 Mount Saint Helens was a beautiful snow covered mountain peak with pristine Spirit Lake below surrounded by old growth forests.  It erupted on May 18,1980 destroying everything living in its path for 230 square miles.
                                                                      

Fast forward 34 years and here we are at Windy Ridge just 4 miles from the "peak" which lost 14% of it height.

Looking down you can see Spirit Lake surrounded with bare hillsides and still littered with the remains of thousand of downed trees.  The massive land slide from the mountain raised the lake bed almost 200 feet.  Now the lake is almost twice its previous size and about half as deep.

  But life is struggling to return to this place and much faster than was first predicted.

And on the side that faced away from the eruption it is happening even more quickly.

 
So some day when my children bring their children to visit this place hopefully it will  once again look like this spot just a few hundred yards outside of the blast zone.