An Eruption. A Funeral. The Lessons.

Forty years ago, at 8:32 AM, May 18, 1980, Mt. St. Helens leveled 230 square miles in the wake of its blast. Fifty-seven people, 7,000 big game animals, and countless fish and birds perished in the plume of death. In addition, 250 homes, 47 bridges, 15 miles of railway, and 185 miles of highway destroyed.

 A few hours earlier, and one-thousand miles away, my family was emotionally flattened when my dad died of a massive heart attack at 50 years of age. Mt. St. Helens spewed 540 million tons of ash over 22,000 square miles. Two hundred miles east of the volcano, ash-covered grass, so livestock owners had to feed hay. As the mourners filed out of the funeral home in Lander, WY, they had to turn on their wipers to clear the cinders from the windshield. I remember my aunt Sally wiping the memorabilia off the hood of her car and into a quart jar.

Disturbance

We lowered dad's coffin to his final resting place at the foot of Sheep Mountain, along the banks of Twin Creek. We often rode past this spot to climb the 1,250 feet to our range on the other side. The magnitude of St. Helens explosion ripping 1,300 feet from that mountain's crown, was equivalent to scalping Sheep Mountain's mass to level ground. Epochal.

 How do you deal with sorrow when you're a tough, cowboy. I went to the bar, drank, laughed and joked. As I turned up the county road toward home that night, thunder crashed, and lightning sliced through the dark, grey clouds. An old, gnarled cottonwood on the irrigation ditch still flamed from a lightning strike on the night dad's tracks were washed from the earth for all eternity.

 A fire, hurricane, financial depression, death, or pandemic upend our world. I forgot about the new horse trailer I wanted and struggled to keep my horses shod. When we get upended, we are in shock. Life makes no sense, and we go numb so that we can get through each day. As we gain a bit of strength, the feelings and facts we were denying begin to surface. 

We know things are amiss and get angry because we can't get things back the way they were. At least that was my experience when dad died. I was angry at my wife's rejection and divorce. I was angry at bankers calling on our loans. I was even angry with unknown environmentalists pushing the Clean Water Act and protecting endangered species. For about a year, I got in a fistfight at Lander's bars regularly. 

Rest

Smoke drifted from the old cottonwood for a week and Mt. St. Helens for two years. Those assessing the aftermath of the eruption claim the silence was deafening. But in that silence, life began to emerge. Shrews, deer mice, and chipmunks were able to find refuge behind a rock or in a burrow to survive their apocalypse. Frogs and fish survived the holocaust beneath the ice of frozen lakes. The small and nimble creatures found shelter from the blast and provided the base of the food web to allow for the return of the large animals.

 But it took time. It took silence. Life needed a pause to catch a breath. The same was true for me. The trauma induced a numbness, which served as a grace period to reset my mindset. In my case, I longed for things to return to the way they were. Facing divorce and bankruptcy, I had overwhelming guilt. I dreamed of being with dad on the ranch I grew up on in Nebraska's Sandhills. I longed for the simple times of gathering calves in the fall as dad trained them to eat cake. Finally, I realized that time had passed, and I became depressed.

 Depression brought me squarely into the present. The here and now. I suddenly knew that dad was not coming back. I suddenly knew that my methods of ranching were not working. But I didn't know what or how to change. And that was depressing.

 A grazed plant knows it will die without leaves capturing sunlight energy and sacrifices her roots to mobilizing enough energy to send up leaves. This could not happen without rest. Maybe it's in this space that we accept the new normal. Once we stop longing for a lost past, we mobilize our nutrients and start learning how to live with the new normal. We don't necessarily like it, but we begin dealing with it. We allow our relationships with life and lives to reorganize.

Recovery

The unseen microorganisms in the soil, the small animals and plants paved the way for Mt. St. Helens recovery. It's this mostly invisible net of life that brings back the elk and other megafauna.

 My life experience with horses, cattle, stock water development, and fence building provided an underlying skillset to build on. I learned about plants from the French scientist, Andre Voison, I learned about financial management from my banker, I learned how to apply my cowboy skills to build a resilient ecosystem with the Practice of Holistic Management. As I gained diversity on the range, in assets, and in the community, my world expanded and grew.

Corona Days Depression

Those guiding policies to nurture economic and social recovery during Corona Days would do well to heed nature's guide from the Mt. St. Helen's totem. In that case, recovery was led by the small, the unseen, and the often underappreciated. Let's invest there.

The housing bubble recession in 2007 prompted the government to push money to the big banks, big car companies, and big insurance companies. Not the lessons of Mt. St. Helens. Maybe that was simply our denial of a changing national economy. Human nature tends to long for the past. Make America Great Again! 

 Enter COVID-19. There is nothing like a pandemic to bring us squarely into the present. We don't like it, but this is the way it is, and it's depressing. We have a time, a very short time, that we can accept that our present has been created by our past behavior. And we can take responsibility and ask ourselves, "How must I behave to create the future I desire?" A regenerative world.

Photo by Peter Donovan

Regeneration

We need something to pull us to this next level. 

It's an ill wind that blows no good. The Coronavirus could bring us past the stage of longing for a lost past and accept our new normal. Use Mt. St. Helens totem and begin the foundation at the ground, with the small. Workers build corporations. Farms and ranches build the cities. Education builds knowledge. What is the string that will pull us through?

For me, the string was understanding the meaning of who and what I was. That came with Holistic Management's Holistic Context and grasping that there could be a Quality of Life. Realizing that I could find a place to exist, and contribute, to a complex world, provided meaning. The foundation of meaning begins with decision-makers at the soil surface. Let's invest there.