Escapees May June 2015 Demo

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May/June 2015|ESCAPEES .3
Thoughts
for the Road
By Kay Peterson #1, Escapees RV Club Co-founder and Director
Kay Peterson illustration by the late Anne Harris #1052.
It happened 10 years ago—on May 18, 1980, to be ex-
act. There had been plenty of warning. People even made
jokes about it. Yet , when the massive explosion came, the
magnitude of the destruction caught everyone offguard,
and people were no longer laughing.
Huge billowing clouds of ash blocked out the sun, turning
that peaceful Sunday morning into an eerie darkness
that sent everyone scurrying to turn on TVs and radios.
Until the ash started raining down over Washington, Idaho
and Montana, most people did not know that the long-
talked-about eruption had blown 1,300 feet off the top of
Mount St. Helens. Only a few actually saw the awesome
mile-wide wall of mud as it came crashing down at 50
miles an hour, down the mountain, down the North Fork of
the Toutle River, sweeping away cabins and cars, uproot-
ing giant fir trees, and knocking down steel and concrete
bridges as if they were made with tinker toys.
Life came to a standstill. Trains, buses and motorists
were blocked by the wall of mud. Airplanes were grounded
by ash that covered everything with a gritty, gray grimness.
The motels and hotels were jammed with stranded tour-
ists. Restaurants and grocery stores ran out of food. People
on the streets wore masks over their faces to keep out the
smell of sulfur and to keep from breathing the choking ash.
Rescue planes brought back nightmarish tales of the
devastation. The beautiful lake was gone. Flattened trees
covered the land as if someone had spilled a million boxes
of toothpicks. There was no sign of life. It was like seeing
a different planet—a weird, forbidding no-man’s land.
The cleanup was a mammoth chore. While snowplows
cleared the highways, rescue teams searched for survi-
vors. Four days later, nature joined in the act of healing: A
pouring rain washed away the volcanic dust. Life began to
return to normal. Stranded tourists went home.
The doomsayers were having a ball. “It will never be
the same,” they said. Spirit Lake was gone. With the river
polluted, fishing was at an end. Mudslides had ruined
Washington's most popular recreation area, turning it into
an ugly, useless wasteland, bereft of trees or animals. Some
put their homes on the market, fearing the cleanup would
bankrupt the state.
Time proved them wrong. True, Spirit Lake is gone, but
there is a new lake there. People are again catching salmon
and steelhead in the Toutle River. The recreation area
abounds with new vegetation and wildlife.
And there is the mountain itself. People used to compare
its beauty to Mt. Fuji. Now that symmetrical beauty has
been replaced by a dome in the center, and the north wall
wears a different face. People don’t use the word “beauti-
ful” as much as they did. They have replaced it with the
word “awesome.”
If Mount St. Helens is awesome, the lesson it teaches is
one we must also respect: When one perfect thing disap-
pears, something unique, and beautiful in its own way,
takes its place. Yet we constantly get ourselves upset over
changes. We shake our heads and tell each other, “It just
isn’t the same now.”
We hear a similar rumble of discontent about Escapees.
Those members with numbers under 500 say it isn’t like
it was when they joined. Those with numbers under 5,000
and 10,000 have the same complaint. Nothing is the same
in maturity as it was in infancy. Do we really want it to be?
The change most members fear is “too many people.”
Some mistakenly think that the terms “more people” and
the “wrong kind of people” are synonymous. But “more
people” really means more friends and more help in times
of crisis. And it also means more places to park and more
SKP Co-Ops and more retreats.
Yesterday’s perfect rose may be wilted today, but the
rose bush lives on. Tomorrow there will be a beautiful new
bud. The Mount St. Helens story is a symbol of our belief
in the future.
Looking back: May/June1990
“When one perfect thing disappears,
something unique, and beautiful in its
own way, takes its place.”
Staff