Like a Rock: Geology and Me by Kit Bakke

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Like a Rock: Geology and Me

My daughter once asked me, “Mom, what’s the best college course you ever took?” I was a political science major who went on to get a second degree in nursing, but answered without hesitation, “Geology, of course.”

Back in the old days, when I was in college, my school required its students to take many courses outside their majors. Even we wimpy English and history types had to take science and math courses, along with meeting a competency requirement in two languages. We were assured that this was all for our own good.

I chose Geology as my science course. I mean, rocks, how hard could it be? (Pun intended, of course!) None of the complexity of chemistry or the uncertainty of biology or the downright weirdness of physics. Or so my non-science friends and I thought. Besides, the course gave us the opportunity to drop the phrase “Wissahickon schist” into casual conversation.

I like geology because it imposes a natural authority that people can do little about. Geology keeps us in our place. By its own gigantic scope and scale, it encourages humans to maintain a realistic perspective on our own frail and insignificant doings. Unlike democracy, I see geology in action every day.

I always take the window seat on airplanes. I am transfixed by the historic motion visible in the land and water below: the folded Rockies, the volcanic Cascades, the ever wider anastamoses of the ancient rivers in the flat midwest. I imagine how it looked when those quiet browns and grays were contorting and roiling in fiery reds and yellows. There would have been great frightening sounds too—having experienced several Seattle and San Francisco earthquakes, I know how the earth groans and shrieks as it moves.

When Mt. St. Helens erupted on May 18, 1980, I was there, on the northeast flank of the mountain. My oldest daughter’s elementary school was spending the weekend at a nature camp on its lovely green slopes. I was with eight or nine other parents and thirty kids, kindergarten age through third grade. Although the mountain had been emitting various volcanic warnings, the trip wasn’t considered foolhardy by anyone concerned—we were outside the well-publicized Red Zone. Sunday morning dawned sunny and cloudless; we packed our camping gear and ate a wonderful pancake breakfast in the bright spring air.

Without warning, within a very few seconds, our crystal blue sky was covered with fast moving, very black clouds—like a speeded-up, time-lapse nature film. The air was suddenly hot, dark and smelly. Small rocks and large cinders began falling on us. We were getting ashed with pulverized bits of the mountain’s top and north side. Within minutes, Mt. St. Helens went from an almost 10,000 foot peak to a mere 8,525 foot flat-topped rise in the Cascade chain.

We heard no boom—the explosion’s sound wave bounced right over our little green valley. Even so, all the parents, whether they’d taken geology in college or not, knew what had happened. We bundled the kids into our cars and high-tailed it out of there.

Speed was impossible, however. We could manage only about 5 MPH on the rutted dirt road, now covered in ash. Our puny headlights could not begin to penetrate the suffocating, wooly blackness that passed for air. Sand and cinders quickly filled engine air intakes, bringing one motor after another to a grinding halt. Every time a car died, we’d push the kids into the remaining cars and snake slowly ahead. Some of the kids were afraid and when kids that age are afraid, they need to pee. I told one of the desperate kids in my car just to pee into her rolled up sleeping bag. It took us two hours to cover ten miles on the dirt access road out of the forest, abandoning half of our ten cars along the way.

As we reached a paved road, an ash-encrusted man in a raincoat was trying, with flares and flashlights, to direct traffic. He aimed us toward a church. By now the sky had lightened a little, showing us a truly lifeless lunar landscape. Everything—the road, fields, trees, vehicles, people and buildings—was completely silted over with light gray, very fine powder. We blew up a huge billowy wake of the stuff behind each car, and when walking outside, with every footstep. There must have been about eighteen inches of the concrete-colored, talcumy ash covering the entire earth as we could see it.

The church offered a welcome haven, as they had plenty of colored paper, scissors and craft items in their basement Sunday school room to keep the kids occupied. About half the parents took care of the kids and the other half tried to figure out what to do next. Of course all telecommunications and media connections were down. Cell phones didn’t exist. We parents broke into two camps: those who wanted to stay because they expected to be rescued by the National Guard, and those, including me, who wanted to leave because they had no faith in the benevolence, intelligence or speed of the local authorities. Besides, for all we knew, a) we were in the path of fast-flowing magma; and/or b) the air was poisonous, and c) for sure the parents back in Seattle would be berserk with worry. I was worried myself about one of the kids who had asthma. I was the pediatric nurse on the trip, so people expected me to take care of any emergencies.

Eventually my “Let’s leave now” group won. We tore strips of cloth to give every kid a little face mask (in case of poisonous air), bundled them back into the remaining cars and slowly caravanned our way back to the blues and greens of home. I brought back a lunch bag of volcanic powder, which is still in my basement.

Kit Bakke is the author of DOT TO DOT, a story of a young girl’s travels and coming of age in the face of her mother’s death. Besides writing, she does as much traveling as possible. Look for her other adventures at www.facebook.com/kitbakkeauthor or www.kitbakke.com.

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