On Sunday, May 18, 1980, Mount St. Helens blew its top. The volcano erupted with the force of several atomic bombs.
It’s just a two-hour drive from downtown Seattle. The blast blew down and scorched 230 square miles of forest. In many places, nothing survived. By now, many plants and animals are back. It will be another 200 years before hardwood forests stand tall again. But it turns out that all this destruction was just nature’s way of renewing itself.
