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Outside Magazine February 2005

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Mount St. Helens
Eruptus Interruptus (cont.)


	Waiting for the big one: volcano watch at the Coldwater Ridge Visitors Center (Photograph by Sian Kennedy)

WE ARE TRANSFIXED—and who can blame us? An erupting volcano is a magnet, pulling us closer, never mind the danger. And science can't explain what makes us want to watch. We love St. Helens because she is ours. We're united in that way: America always roots for the home team, even if it might explode and cover us in magma. But when it comes to a deeper understanding of what drives us to sit in her lap, waiting for her to erupt, we quickly fracture and fall back on whatever beliefs brought us here in the first place. Reason falls short, and superstition rushes in.

Down the highway at the Seven Wonders Museum and Bookstore, in Toutle, debunking science is job one. Late one afternoon, my car is the only one in the driveway of the stucco house. A bald man wearing matching hearing aids rushes out

We are transfixed—and who can blame us? We love Mount St. Helens because she is our own national steaming volcano. But when it comes to understanding what drives us to sit in her lap, waiting for her to erupt, reason falls short and superstition rushes in.

to usher me in.

"When I get a guest, I salivate," he tells me, shaking my hand. "I practically stand between them and the door."

Lloyd Anderson, a 69-year-old retired nondenominational pastor, believes in creation science, which holds that—shucks to the know-it-all geologists—the earth is only 6,000 years old and was created by the Lord in six days. The 1980 eruption was a flick of the divine wrist, intended to disprove evolutionists once and for all. "God wanted people to see how fast the face of earth can be changed through catastrophic events," he tells me.

Anderson delivers a nonstop monologue on God and science, weaving effortlessly between carbon dating and rates of magmatism to more ethereal matter like spiritual wickedness and the "demon horde" assigned by Satan to haunt each of us.

"I'm more of an information giver than a nurturer," he says, explaining why he and his wife left their Seattle flock in 1999 to found this place. "I like people, but I don't bond with them. I have five wonderful kids, but I can't say I'm close to any of them."

Leafing through the logbook, I wonder what progress he is making toward overturning hundreds of years of science accepted in generally every nation on earth. In the past week, with the biggest crowds in recent memory, the Seven Wonders Museum has been getting four visitors per day.

As the months go by, I surmise that he's getting fewer still. On October 6, the U.S. Geological Survey downgrades the volcanic alert to level two, orange, and on October 11, perhaps fed up with the will-she-or-won't-she game, they declare St. Helens to be in a "constant eruptive state"—a convenient catchall for continuing earthquakes, small emissions, and, perhaps, in weeks or months or years, a major eruption. Meanwhile, the volcano continues to bulge: In early November scientists report that the glowing magma lobe has risen 300 feet in just eight days. In December, she's still smoking.

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