Eruption: The Untold Story of Mount St. Helens

by Steve Olson

Weyerhaeuser was as religious as any of his countrymen. He went to church whenever he was in Rock Island and had a special suit reserved for Sundays. But an episode from his youth in Germany had made a powerful impression on him. When the old stone church in his village was torn down, coffins that had been buried in the basement were exhumed and opened. At first the bodies inside seemed miraculously preserved. But when they were exposed to the air, they crumbled into dust. It is hard to know what Weyerhaeuser made of this story. But the fact that he remembered it so vividly suggests that he was more likely to place his faith in this world than the next one.

The problems facing the nuclear industry are largely raised by fears of the public, but we all know that fear requires ignorance.”

Yeoman farmers were the preferred owners, stemming from the Jeffersonian belief that small landowners were the best bulwarks against tyranny.

“Preservation of our environment is not a partisan challenge,” he said in 1984. “It’s common sense.”

The habitats that have recovered fastest are those that were left in disarray.

Today the area surrounding Mount St. Helens has much more biological diversity than it did before the eruption. For that reason, ecologists prefer to call the reestablishment of life around the volcano a renewal rather than a recovery.