Dawn, July 16, 2006

The hiking/climbing trail to the top of Mt. St. Helens re-opened Friday, even though the volcano is active.  Geologists say that the continuing eruption is very gas-poor, that the lava is like a soda can left out opened on the dining room table all day.  There is little gas pressure behind the erupting flow, which is rebuilding the volcano inside the crater created in the 1980 eruption.  It is building itself several hundred feet a day, but the lava is fragile and builds up and crumbles down in shards.

I’d love to hike up there.

Here is a view from the north face of my apartment building:

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Zooming in a bit closer, you can see ash and smoky steam off the top of the volcano:

If I have to have an erupting volcano just 50 some miles away, this is my kind of eruption!

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On a more prosaic note, here is downtown Portland in the rising dawn:

The tallest building on the left is the Wells Fargo Bank tower, and the tower on the right catching the sun’s rays is the US Bank tower.  The building next to the Wells Fargo tower is the Koin Center Building, a Michael Graves designed building, which, although it seems to be denigrated because Graves’ designs are no longer popular, is a good looking building and is, to my mind, much more distinctive than either of it’s taller neighbors.