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MOUNT ST. HELENS
The Rebirth of Mount St. Helens
Barbara Decker
64 pages. Oversized 10”x13”
ISBN 1-58071-069-7
$9.95 
This stunningly beautiful, oversized book is lavishly illustrated with breathtaking color imagery by America's leading landscape photographers. In addition to the stunning photography, the book also includes detailed maps of the park and region and insightful, heartfelt narratives detailing the parks' natural and human histories.
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Just before our plane was due to land in Portland, Oregon on May 19, the pilot came on the intercom and announced to us, “I’m going to fly just a little farther north so that you can have a look at something you’ve never seen before.” He was right, and it was a sight we could hardly believe. As the plane banked and slowly circled we could see the angry, shattered “stump” of Mount St. Helens, with fumes still rising from its gaping crater.
When we had flown out of Portland just a few days earlier, we had marveled at the clear view of the beautiful, symmetrical, snow-covered mountain, 9,677 feet high, with a tiny crater in its summit. The broken mountain we saw now was 8,364 feet high, with a huge, jagged crater that was tilted toward the north, where the forest was blown down for as far as we could see.
I was traveling with five geologists from the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory (HVO), including my husband Bob, who was the Scientist-In-Charge there. We had all spent time at Mount St. Helens in April and early May, when the volcano was just stirring to life, but we had gone back to work in Hawaii when it seemed that the early volcanic activity could continue for quite a while. We all lived in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park—our houses were on the rim of Kilauea Crater, and we were all familiar with eruptions there. But Hawaiian eruptions are different: instead of the sudden explosive ferocity of stratovolcanoes like Mount St. Helens, Hawaii’s volcanoes erupt more “quietly,” with high fountains of incandescent lava and long fluid lava flows that can travel for many miles. The eruptions are spectacular, but very rarely deadly. While we had all seen the results of explosive eruptions in other countries, Mount St. Helens had a special immediacy: it was in the United States, and besides, the eruption had taken the life of one of our colleagues.
—From
“The Rebirth of Mount St. Helens” by Barbara
Decker
The Rebirth of Mount St. Helens
Barbara Decker
64 pages. Oversized 10”x13”
ISBN 1-58071-069-7
$9.95
- OTHER TITLES THAT MAY BE OF INTEREST
 Mount St. Helens National Volcanic
Monument by Robert & Barbara Decker
Mt.
St. Helens: Fire Mountain: The Eruption and Rebirth
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Mount St. Helens Postcard Book
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Mount Rainier: A Perilous Paradise by Ron Warfield
- Parks of Washington by Nicky Leach
- Olympic: A Timeless Refuge by Nicky Leach
- Columbia River Gorge:
Land of Falling Water by Nicky Leach
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