March Photo of the Day. March 5. Ash Wednesday.
This photo may not seem like much, but this small bottle is filled with ash. Not just any ash, but ash from the volcanic eruption of Mt. St. Helens in Washington on May 18, 1980. On that day, my parents who were living in Portland, Oregon, watched the eruption from their home. As the ash from the volcano began drifting down on their car, they gathered some of it and put it into a glass jar to save.
All these many years later, the vial of ash still reminds me of that day when I heard about the eruption and was concerned for the safety of my family. We were living in Indonesia, in the process of moving from West Java to what is now West Papua (on the island of New Guinea). I treasure it as a memory of how my mom and dad thought of me every day and saved this tiny bottle of volcanic ash so I could see for myself a tiny bit of what they experienced that day.
2 comments:
...with I was in the nursery business I bought lots of plants from Oregon growers. After the eruption, the soil in container grown plants was cover with dust.
It was weeks if not months before the area was clean of the ash.
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