The Furious Spinner

Since Loo Wit, or Mount St. Helens, is in the news again, I decided I'd post some of my Loo Wit essays, which are from Falling: A Memoir in Nature, the series of essays I began in March 2002. (I've posted some of them before.) I wrote most of the essays immediately after walking in the woods, usually at Falling Creek. This one was written after a Solstice trip to Mount St. Helens. You'll notice the Rumi poem crops up again.

Catastrophe

June 21, 2002

At 3:20 a.m., two hours before sunrise, my husband Mario and I drive toward Mount Saint Helens—Loo Wit, Lady of Fire. We decided to celebrate Solstice by watching the sun come up on the mountain.

Mario drives the dark windy roads through the Gifford-Pinchot National Forest in Washington state. I lean forward and look up at the stars through the windshield, the tall conifers a lined boundary for my stargazing. On the radio, Mick Jagger sings “Satisfaction.” I grin and sing along, “I can’t get no...satisfaction.” I am giddy with joy.

The lights from our car run halfway up the trees, creating an eerie silvery-green light that makes me think of UFOS and people suddenly disappeared in the middle of the night. Deer turn white in our headlights several times. An elk cow strides across the road and into the trees just as the sky begins to lighten.

“We didn’t tell anyone where we were going,” I say. “We could slide off this road and into oblivion and no one would ever know.”

It happens all the time in the West. Entire families sometimes disappear, only to be discovered days, months, or years later in deep ravines or at the bottoms of lakes where their cars settled after veering off the road. Recently the car of a couple who went missing in 1929 was discovered in Lake Crescent, in Washington’s Olympic Peninsula. Authorities speculated they missed a curve and went into the lake; at the time of their disappearance many believed that was exactly what had happened, but their bodies and car were never recovered and some hinted that the parents had actually run away and deserted their two boys. The boys were understandably devastated by the mysterious loss of their parents. One of them died in a boating accident years later (his body was never recovered), the other of acute alcoholism before he was sixty.

“The West is where people go to disappear,” I say. “Either purposefully or by accident.”

I don’t want to disappear. But I wouldn’t mind transforming. Like Mount St. Helens? She had blown off more than a little steam and transformed from a mountainous alpine beauty into this gray ash-covered steaming crone.

I can relate.

Suddenly Loo Wit comes into view in the distance as we go around a bend. Morning light touches the very top of her. Her snowy south side looks like a shawl thrown across the hunched shoulders of an old gray being.

The roads snake, switchback, hairpin. I have slept only two hours and didn’t eat enough. My stomach is feeling storm-tossed.

“I didn’t realize the roads would be dental floss thin,” I say, clutching the armrest and swearing as the roadsides keep disappearing into bottomless ravines. I feel as though we are driving on pavement suspended over...nothing.

Mario laughs and glances at me.

I swear again and cry, “Mario! Watch the road!”

“Yes, dear,” he says. I gently smack his shoulder.

Not too gently.

The dusky light begins to turn golden. The forest gives way to barren hills covered in blow-down (fallen trees) and snags. Some of the blow-down curves over the hills, looking like stilled waves of gray Saragossa grass. There is hardly any color anywhere. Just the bleached bone starkness of the tree skeletons. I cannot stop looking at them, still standing after all these years, bare naked, for everyone to see.

Must be some truth in them somewhere.

Isn’t it called the bare naked truth?

Or just the naked truth?

I cannot photograph them. It would be like taking pictures of the dead in their coffins. Didn’t they used to do that?

We drive toward the north side of the mountain, where the blast originated. Here the mountain is dirty gray—only not quite. Is it the sun? I squint. It has an almost lavender tinge to it. Twenty years ago the middle of the mountain slid away to become—in part—the pumice plain below it that poured into Spirit Lake, causing the lake to rise up some 200 feet higher than it had been previous to the eruption. Now Loo Wit looks like a giant scoop of melting lavender-gray ice cream with a chunk taken out of its center.

We stop at Harmony Trail but decide we want to get closer to Loo Wit. We keep driving. The light grows brighter. The sun will crest the trees any moment. The road is a snake, slithering to a destination only it knows. A tall foothill in front of Loo Wit displays a green north side, in stark contrast to the desolate-looking volcano.

We stop the car at Windy Ridge Viewpoint. It is as far as we can go by car, 4 miles from the volcano. It is 5:25 a.m., seven minutes after sunrise. We are totally alone, human-wise. We stand looking at the maw of Loo Wit. A new dome rises at the center.

Silence. Desolation.

It is nearly indescribable. It’s like looking at a half-formed being, or a dissolving landscape—or a mountain with its north side pretty much blown away.

We hear water.

A swallow swims the air currents right above us.

Stillness.

We stare at the mountain. She is so close I feel as though I can reach out and touch her.

We notice stairs on a ridge behind the public restrooms, so we walk up them to the top. Truman Trail, named after Harry Truman, the old man who refused to leave his home at Spirit Lake and is now buried with it, two hundred feet below the lake. Below us, our little blue Honda is now tinier than a matchbox car.

Mario and I stand at a wooden fence and look down at the calm lake. Where blowdown doesn’t still float, the water reflects the surrounding ridges and hills picture-card perfectly.

Still no sound, except water, somewhere, flowing into the lake.

I can’t tell how far Spirit Lake is below us. 2,000 feet. 3,000? 400? It seems further away than the mountain, but it isn’t. I stare at an island of wood debris near its center. Is it the size of a house or a bread box? Distance is skewed.

Mario glances at me. We are staring into a graveyard.

“They keep talking about how much new growth there’s been since the eruption,” Mario says, “but it seems so desolate.”

I nod.

The story goes that area Native Americans believed seeahtiks lived in Spirit Lake, and if you got too close these huge hairy creatures would reach out of the water and drag you under with their long hairy arms.

And then what happened? I wonder.

Death? Transformation?

Transmutation?

Disappearance?

Mario and I walk along the ridge. The ground beneath us looks like a combination of ash and pumice—gray sand and large pieces of kitty litter. Desert-like. Above and below the trail, huge tree trunks lay half-submerged in the sand, probably the first to fall in Loo Wit’s initial blast. An occasional bush grows here and there.

The sun crests the ridge.

It is about 6:00 a.m. Officially Solstice.

The longest day of the year.

Why am I here?

Mario stares out at the lake.

I keep walking into the sun.

Why am I here?

To mark the Solstice, the turning of the Wheel of the Year.

Usually we celebrate with a group of people. This year I wanted to drive into the midst of desolation

to be in Nature

to be

to be

Beside myself

To start a new life

to transform

to disappear?

When I was younger, I remember other girls saying they wished they were someone else. They wanted another face. Another body. To be someone famous, someone Else. I never did. I wanted to be me. I didn’t understand why anyone would want to be be anybody but herself. For one thing, I reasoned, it was a useless wish: we could only be who we are.

I was very young.

Now I still want to be myself. Only different. Healthier.

Transmutation—to change from one form, state, or nature into another—sounds like a good idea, if I could hang onto what I liked.

Was Loo Wit able to retain that which was precious to her when she blew off her north face, when she shook off that which held her back, down, and all around? Or had it all been out of her control? One minute she was herself,

the next

she was beside herself,

and above

and around

the planet.

A killer.

Destroyer.

Crone.

Had she had enough?

Had it all built up and then

POW

WHAM!

Blam!

Thank ya, ma’am.

What happened to me?

Life was going along. Then gradually

suddenly

there was a snarl in

my brain, my body

Nothing was ever the same.

Especially me.

I dream of mountains. In one dream, a woman shows me pictures of two mountains. She says some mountains don’t have a way of releasing energy so they explode (or implode) like Mount Saint Helens, destroying themselves and everything around them. Other mountains are constantly releasing the energy. Even in the dream I thought this had something to do with my body and my way of releasing energy.

Transmutation.

Think like a mountain.

Be like a mountain.

In Hawaii, visitors throw bottles of liquor into Pele as an offering to the fiery goddess. What should I do to honor Loo Wit?

Mario and I walk, silently, over the pumice. We breathe in the stillness. I take a few photographs. We can see W’yeast (Mount Hood), Pahto(Mount Adams), and Tahoma (Mount Rainier). This morning, we walk amongst giants.

After a while, we turn back. We count the 400 plus steps as we go back down to the parking lot.

They paved paradise and put up a parking lot...

Our legs are trembling by the time we reach our car.

We turn the car around and drive for about a mile, away from the mountain. We get another view of hillsides of snags—blanched tree skeletons, all facing Loo Wit, a mute audience to her transformation. She had blown off all of their green finery, yet still they stood, dead witnesses, those who couldn’t take it prone on the ashy ground, the life scorched off them so badly they couldn’t even become nurse logs. There is life on the hillsides, but it is huddled close to the ground, as if hiding from notice, or away from any future fiery storms.

We stop at Harmony Trail again and start down the path. Here we cannot see Loo Wit. The hillside is green with brush. We slip and slid across a snowy part of the trail on our way to Spirit Lake. Insects are thick, hovering around us like a living nearly-colorless aura. Blow-down fills this end of Spirit Lake, looking like Lincoln logs in a tiny pond. Last year’s everlasting pearl dissolves—dirty white—at our feet after months under the snow. Trillium nods at us. Two yellow violets stick out from beneath the brush.

7:30 a.m. or so, and it is hot already. We sweat. It is a long way down to the lake. We can see the distant shore. So close.

But truly far away.

We would be walking UP in the hottest part of the day.

If we made it to Spirit Lake, Seeahtiks would probably reach up and drag me under.

I’d be disappeared.

Sometimes I feel disappeared already, or like a ghost walking through a world where ghosts are no longer seen. Or believed in.

An acquaintance of mine who is older and grayer—and a reporter—says she likes being disappeared. “They don’t see me, but I see them and I can learn a lot that way.”

I glance around at the tall white-boned snags. Does anyone see them?

Eagles nest in snags.

I dreamed I was an eagle once, shut inside my car, standing on top of the seat. I was also outside the car and didn’t really recognize myself. I opened the door and let myself out. I asked myself if she knew the way home. I nodded and went in the opposite direction. I watched myself climb a hill and walk away, pulling off my clothes as I went.

Bare naked.

Reluctantly Mario and I decide to turn back on this Solstice morning. It is too hot for Spirit Lake and this trail.

Solemnly we drive away from Loo Wit, after whispering our thanks.

The road weaves in and out, around, curve after curve. After curve.

“People come out West to disappear,” I murmur, half asleep in the sunbaked car.

I moved out West to get as far away from everything and everyone I knew. I wanted to change my life.

My life changed, all right.

Soon we can no longer see Loo Wit. The forest grows up around us, green and lush. The road curves, and suddenly I see the butt end of a blue car off the road and over an embankment. We immediately brake our car and get out. The wrecked car is barely visible—we hadn’t seen it earlier this morning. We cautiously walk closer to it, afraid of what is inside. The windshield is cracked, a spider web of lines leading away from the impact—of someone’s head? Inside I see a shadow of someone hunched over the steering wheel. I shudder. I squint to try and see inside. Mario gets right up to the window and peers in: the car is empty except for a blanket in the back seat.

Who had I seen slumped over the steering wheel? Should I open the door and let her out?

We step onto the road again and look at the car. The license plate is gone, and water pools on one of the back lights. I look into the forest. Which way did the driver go? Into the forest or onto the road? Did she sit in the back seat shivering, wrapped in the blanket for a time, before deciding what to do? The remnants of a flare make a white line on the edge of the pavement. So she signaled for help?

Help!

When I was under twenty sitting at the kitchen table talking with my mother one afternoon, we heard the squeal of tires on our country road out front of the house, then that scream metal makes as it collapses and twists, and the crunch of glass shattering. Before my eardrums had stopped vibrating with the sounds of the crash, I was out the door.

Running, racing.

Steam or smoke rose from a crushed brown sedan tipped over on its side in the ditch.

A baby wailed.

I raced. The car wobbled.

I smelled gasoline.

I reached in through the shattered window

—glass and blood everywhere—

and a woman held up a bloody screaming infant toward me, carefully, gently, like Kunta Kinte’s father had held him up to the stars the night he was born, only this woman was sobbing.

“My baby,” she said.

I took the baby, cradled her bloody body against my breasts, and raced back into the house and gave her to my mother. Out again. Screen door slamming. Feet hitting the ground.

Across the road.

I pulled the mother from the wreck.

We waited for the explosion.

Which didn’t come.

The mother wept as we wiped the blood from the baby and found no wounds. It was blood from cuts the mother had sustained.

I look back at the girl who was me that day and smile. No hesitation. I knew what to do and I did it.

Thoughtless.

Beside myself.

Or wholly myself.

Whole, at least.

One day a few years ago after years, months, days of illness, misery, discomfort, I cried out angrily, asking the Universe when would I feel better. I wanted to be well, I said, but if that couldn’t happened, I wanted to accept myself—to come to some peace and understanding about my condition. I picked up a book of Rumi’s poems to fling across the room (it was the thing nearest to me). Instead, I opened the book at random (to Chapter Four: Cauldron of Love) to this poem:

Oh seeker,
These thoughts have such power over you.
From nothing you become sad,
From nothing you become happy.

You are burning in the flames
But I will not let out out
until you are fully baked,
fully wise,
and fully yourself.

I laughed and cried as I read the poem. The Universe had finally spoken to me—and She said I was half-baked.

OK. I could wait.

Until I was fully myself.

Loo Wit has always been volcanic in nature. Eruption is a part of her cycle. This wondrous desolation Mario and I witnessed this morning was a part of being a mountain.

Mario drives us around the mountainous curves toward home. I dreamily hold on for dear life.

Loo Wit has not disappeared. She cleared the crap from her throat twenty years ago. Now we wait for what is next.

Perhaps that is what I am doing, too. Clearing my throat—my life—of debris, preparing for what comes next. 0 comments

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