It Rhymes

When the Pacific northwest volcano Mount St. Helens erupted on May 18, 1980, I was living hundreds of miles away in Pullman, Washington, for my first-time assistant professor position at Washington State University. I and my students, in play production rehearsal at that time, heard on the news and through word of mouth that the volcano’s force was unexpectedly tremendous, and a huge cloud of ash was floating eastward our way. In the early afternoon we could see it far off in the sky, and the smell of sulfur was getting stronger and stronger.

Pullman is a small, sleepy college town where nothing much happens, so the students quickly and excitedly organized “volcano parties” with their friends. It was one of those freakish, act-of-God events that made everyone look up toward the sky with awe and cheer “Woo-Hoo!” Because no one had ever been through something like this. No one knew what to do.

At two in the afternoon, the black ash cloud covered the city completely, and it became as dark as midnight—at two in the afternoon. The whole town became dead silent as people stayed indoors to protect themselves from the falling ash. It sounded like fine grains of sand raining gently on our roofs, and it smelled like strong, burnt matches.

We turned on our TVs and radios to get the latest news (there was no Internet in 1980), and all the officials could tell us was to stay indoors and wear protective covering around our noses and mouths. No one could drive because the ash would clog the engines and bring cars to a complete standstill within minutes. All we could do was wait it out. Some of us, like fools, went outdoors to witness the ashfall. And it was an indescribable experience: Eerie. Mystic. Like Hell was just quietly and indifferently passing through our town.

After a few hours, it began to get brighter outside, and people started slowly coming out of their homes wearing handkerchiefs, bandanas, and painter’s masks wrapped around their lower faces to see what had been left behind by the massive ash cloud.

It was unbelievable. Everything—everything—was grey. Sidewalks, parked cars, trees, flowers—all around. It was like thick, nonradioactive fallout. It looked and smelled like grey death.

No one had ever been through something like this. No one knew what to do next. All we could do was get our snow shovels out from storage, scoop the thick layers of ash up, water it down, and find some way to keep living our daily lives in that toxic atmosphere. And most everyone for the next few weeks, out of boredom or contagion, decorated their masks in vivid colors as if to defy the dull greyness all around us.

Forty years later, from 2020 onward, we’re all wearing different types of masks because there was another kind of violent eruption by Mother Nature, another type of greyness that fell thickly on the landscape, another form of indescribable destruction. No one had ever been through something like this. No one knew what to do.

That saying is true: History doesn’t repeat; It rhymes.