The Furious Spinner

This is another of the essays from Falling: A Memoir in Nature. I don't think I've posted this one before. A week after we went to Lava Creek, a man and his son walked in our footsteps. Only they didn't come back. The place where Mario stood, where I worried he would slip and fall, was where a young boy slipped and fell. His father did the only thing he could do—although it was inevitably suicidal—he went after the boy, somehow. They never had a chance. They weren't the first. A few years earlier, another father and son had also perished. But we knew none of that when we hiked this trail.

June 2002

I’m sitting in Hoda’s Middle Eastern Cuisine dining room in Portland, Oregon, eating vegetarian mezza for two with my husband Mario and listening to the owner’s husband at the table next to us talk with his parents in Lebanese. I like the sound of the language—it’s like listening to a creek; I know the words have meaning, but I don’t know what that meaning is. And I don’t need to. I could close my eyes and fall to sleep to the music of it.

Earlier in the day, I fell to sleep in the back of our Honda while Mario drove us home from the south side of Mount St. Helens. I had fallen on the trail, and for some reason I crawled into the back seat of the car—something I never do—to sleep with the sun on my face. Mario said my body needed the rest to mend. I hadn’t thought the fall was that bad.

Maybe I was like a dog curling up to lick her wounds.

We have lived in the Cascade Mountains at sea level for nearly two decades. When we resided in White Salmon, Washington, I saw Mount Hood (W’yeast) every day. I watched the snow come and go and clouds move over her, envelop her as if she never existed, then disappear again to reveal her shiny silky-snow sides. For our tenth wedding anniversary, Mario and I stayed the night on W’yeast, at the timberline. We sat above cottonball clouds while a fat full yellow moon rose above us. I awakened in the middle of the night and watched the lights of a snow-groomer move up and down the mountain like a lit comb slowly untangling the tresses of a white-haired giantess.

From afar, I worshipped Mount Hood and her snowy ornate appearance. When I went up her sides, however, I felt anxious, short of breath, de-pressed. Pressed. I supposed it was because of the altitude, yet I didn’t feel that way on other mountains. Each mountain evoked different sensations.

The last time I went to Mount Rainier, her sides were spotted with wildflowers, looking as though the latest thundercloud had let loose colorful drops of paint rather than rain. I felt light-hearted on Rainier and half-expected Heidi to run out of the lodge looking for her grandfather.

When I was a teenager living in Michigan, I used to imagine running away to the mountains in the event of a nuclear holocaust. I pictured the western mountains much like Heidi’s Alps—only with more trees. Knock on wood no nuclear holocaust happened, but I did eventually move to the mountains. Last year Mario and I renewed our twenty-year old wedding vows standing on the lip of a lava tube created by an ancient eruption of the area’s disappeared volcanoes.

Mount Saint Helens (Loo Wit) erupted May 18, 1980, approximately six weeks before Mario and I met. We both remembered volcano dust falling on the cars at our respective towns, mine in Ypsilanti, Michigan, his in Sudbury, Ontario, Canada. Neither of us knew then where Mount St. Helens or Washington state was. Two years later we moved out West together as husband and wife.

Seven years after the eruption, we visited Mount St. Helens for the first time. Her sides were gray, covered in pumice and charred blow-down. Standing far from her active center, I felt renewed. Loo Wit had blown her top, exposed her fiery center, felled 150,000 acres of trees, and obliterated billions of organism, yet seven years later wildflowers pushed up through her ash.

Today we hiked on the south side of Loo Wit. We wanted to go east, but the roads were still snow- and debris-covered from the winter. We drove instead to Lava Canyon at the foot of Mount St. Helens. The black sides of Loo Wit showed through the melting snow, looking like a bushel of snakes thrown onto a white blanket or tangled black licorice tossed on a heap of melting vanilla ice cream. As we drove toward the parking lot at the trailhead to Lava Canyon, Loo Wit’s peak disappeared; I felt as though I were on the body of a goddess and could no longer see her head.

It was cold and windy. I wore two jackets, a hat, and gloves. Mario walked beside me down the paved switchback trail. We had started out the morning crabbing at each other. He thought I was picking on him; I thought he was oversensitive. We generally did not argue with one another. We had great discussions where we disagreed with each other on particular subjects, but petty bickering was not part of our relationship. We had had our first fight about ten years into our marriage and wondered briefly if that meant we were headed for divorce court. We decided instead that normal people did occasionally get on each other’s nerves—as we had this morning. The morning fight was now nearly forgotten as we walked down into the canyon. I hoped the paved trail ended soon. I wanted my soles against Loo Wit.

Lava Canyon had an interesting history. Approximately 3,500 years ago, new mud flows had eroded much of the lava already there from a previous eruption, then filled up the canyon. Trees grew on the new soil. Grassy meadows appeared. No one knew a canyon lay beneath it all until the mud flows of the 1980 eruption scoured out the canyon again, revealing the ancient lava and other rock formations.

Muddy Creek ran through the canyon now, creating lovely falls as it twisted and turned over the lava rock and the red/orange rock that now made up the canyon.

The trail seemed to end, and we stepped onto the slippery curving lava: it was smooth and black, and I wanted to lay my body down and stretch across it. It reminded me of the backs of whales. The Muddy River swirled around the hardened lava, becoming swimming-pool blue, before bubbling down and over into a deep dark pool below. It was so far down I could look for only a second before feeling dizzy and stepping back. Not all of the water fell into the chasm. Some stayed on the lava and continued alongside us as we walked along a new dirt trail, on the other side of the lava.

This trail took us away from the lava and water. To our right, twenty year old riparian trees grew. To our left, a huge slab of slate hung above us, pieces of it ready to fall at any moment. Near the ground, the layers of gray-black slate looked as though they had been crushed—or heated—until they all fused together. As we kept walking, the rock changed from slate to some kind of red/orange rock streaked with lines of cream. I used to be a rock hound but did not know what this stone was. On a ridge above and beyond the young deciduous trees, older conifers grew, many with branches on one side only, as if the 1980 eruption had stripped and crippled them but hadn’t quite killed them. Some had turned into snags.

The dirt trail ended at a narrow wooden suspension bridge—above the deep very deep deep canyon below. Mario started across, stopped a third of the way, and looked back at me. “This is scary,” he whispered. Mario loved bridges; no bridge had ever scared him before. I took a step back. Mario kept going. The bridge swayed, reminding me of Galloping Gertie (the Tacoma-Narrows Bridge) just before it collapsed.

Once on the other side, Mario turned and waved. I waited for the swaying to subside, then started across.

The bridge wobbled. Swayed. I looked down. The bottom had to be three million miles away. I slowly backed up until I was on Loo Wit solid ground again. Mario walked back over the bridge to me.

“I’ll go with you,” he said.

“No!” I answered. “That’ll just make it sway more.”

I started across again. Got to the same spot and stopped. I looked down. Two huge old trees spilled down the falls and were completely still. Water found passage below them, streaking down the red/orange rock. From here, the two hundred (at least) year old trees looked like Lincoln logs.

I looked forward to the other side. The bridge swayed.

“I’m not gonna die,” I chanted. “I’m not gonna die.” I kept walking. I tried not to imagine the bridge wires snapping, me falling, falling, falling...

I got to the center of the bridge. I felt as though I were going to throw-up. I wasn’t sure I could ever move again. I could see all green in my peripheral vision. Renewal. Possibility. Life. I didn’t want to be afraid of a bridge. My stomach churned, I was dizzy, my heart raced. I thought about getting on my belly and crawling to the other side, but I figured that would make the bridge sway even more.

“I’m not gonna die, I’m not gonna die, I’m not gonna die.” I walked slowly forward.

The bridge rocked. Rolled. Swayed.

Finally my feet touched the Earth again. My legs were so rubbery I had to sit down. I looked at the ground until Mario was safely across and by my side again.

“Wasn’t that fun?” he said, grinning.

I shook my head.

“No, it wasn’t,” I said.

We continued on the trail, going up now, on a loop back to the beginning of the trail. My legs shook, and the rocks beneath my feet didn’t feel solid. The trail took us into deciduous trees again. Cool, green, watery. This felt familiar, unlike the desolate mountain sides. The path curved. I put my foot down in water. I picked it up again to put it somewhere else. I thought, “This is too slippery.” In the next second, I went down, hard. My foot slipped out from under me. My hands and right side fell to the Earth, the moss and water tempering the blows of the rock. I heard a crack. Splash.

Instantly I was back up again. Soaking wet. I pulled the camera from around my neck.

“Don’t worry about me, check the camera for damage,” I said in answer to Mario’s inquiry about my fitness.

I tore off my top jacket and stepped up onto dry stone. I pulled up my wet pant leg. Blood on my knee. Bruising on my leg. Throbbing foot, hands. I needed some first aid, but I was OK. I looked down at Mario; he gave me the thumbs-up sign about the camera.

I washed the wound out with water, sang a healing chant I knew, and continued up the trail, with Mario carrying everything, including my hat on top of his hat.

“I bet I look very stylish,” he said.

“You certainly do,” I said, laughing and limping next to him, one pant leg up, the other down. What a sight we were.

At the car, I pulled off my pants. I put a couple of drops of lavender on gauze and taped it to my knee. We ate lunch, then drove away from Lava Canyon with me still pantless. The mountain peak came into view again, and I asked Mario to pull over. I got out of the car, dressed only in a shirt, sweatshirt, panties, bandage, and shoes. I was cold, so I put on a jacket and walked a short distance to get a better view of Loo Wit. I took a picture of the snakes in the snow. (Later I learned the area I was shooting was called Shoestring Glacier.)

I turned to go back to the car. Mario smiled at my attire, at me taking photographs of Mount St. Helens nearly naked. He looked completely charmed, smitten. I grinned.

“It’s cold,” I said.

“I bet,” he answered, laughing.

Soon after I curled up in the back seat. Ten miles later, I got out of the car, went into the woods, and urinated. Loo Wit wouldn’t mind. I wasn’t a foreigner here. And even if I were, it would be all right.

I thanked her for the day. She might not understand my language, but I hoped it was soothing to her, like listening to one of her creeks curve around her beds of lava.

I got into the backseat of the car, again, lay down, and stroked the back of Mario’s head as he drove us toward home. I closed my eyes. The shadows of the trees flickered across my eyelids

as I was falling

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All photographs and written material copyright © 2003-2008 by Kim Antieau unless otherwise indicated. May not be used without permission.