Black As Night

"I wanna see it painted, painted black

Black as night, black as coal

I wanna see the sun blotted out from the sky

I wanna see it painted, painted, painted, painted black"

(Rolling Stones, 1966)

It was two months before the 7/11 birth of Tyler Thomas Campbell.

Mid-May of 1980. A beautiful weekend day on the South Hill of Spokane, Washington.

It was an old area of town, covered with small custom homes... something you might imagine pictured in Good Housekeeping.

A few friends were gathering for a neighborhood picnic.They were momentarily positioned between two homes, laden with food supplies and heading for one of the back yards. The western sky was at their back when they noticed the light dimming.

They circled the home to face the sky and saw what appeared to be a black wall carried by the prevailing wind and heading straight in their direction. Picnic plans were immediately cancelled and all returned to their homes to switch on their televisions and see if there was news of the event.

Within minutes it went from sunny spring day to black as night. During those moments absolutely everything that was exposed to the sky was covered with a half-inch or so of battleship grey material that seemed like talcum power in it's consistency.

News reports were quick and effective."Mt St. Helens has erupted. Stay calm. Stay inside. The storm is volcanic ash. We don't know how harmful it may be."

The next morning, they peered out their windows and wondered at the surreal landscape. Homes, autos, yards and roads were totally draped in a mask of grey. He opened the door slightly and their Old English Sheepdog, Gypsy bolted out into the yard. With her mix of white and grey hair it was as if someone had deliberately color matched her with her surroundings.

As he ran to catch her, she ran onto the empty street. Each time one of her paws touched down a cloud of ash would erupt. It was a spectacular and totally unearthly sight.

Another day passed and news came that it might be okay to go outside "but wear face masks just in case the ash is toxic". Water hoses came out all over the neighborhood and people began rinsing the ash off things.

He snapped a photo (I will post it as soon as I locate it) of 7-months pregnant Julieann Marie Campbell while she was outside hosing down the ash. It was quite a site... a little round person with a hat and mask and a hose.

They would later learn that a couple of their neighbor friends, both geologists, had been on an aerial single-engine plane tour of the mountain when it erupted and they had narrowly escaped being caught in it. (He had given his wife the tour as a birthday present.) Dorothy and Keith Stoffel snapped a lot of photos and later included them in a book, "Volcanic Eruptionsof Mount St. Helens, the First 100 Days".

It would go down as the deadliest and most economically destructive volcanic eruption in the history of the United States.

Sometimes life is just bigger than, well, life itself...