The earthquake activity at Mount St. Helens had built to a crescendo. When a volcano shakes this hard, it almost always spells trouble: magma rising, an eruption imminent. You can’t know exactly what they are going to do, and when, and to what degree. But you suspect. You prepare as best you can. On March [...]

This is the trouble with beginnings: the beginning is often subtle, and unrecognizable at the time. It’s only in retrospect that we can go back, look at sequences of events until we find a place to stab a finger down and say, “Here. Here is where it began. This is the time, the place, the [...]

Imagine being an extraterrestrial geologist in geostationary orbit above the Pacific Northwest in the 1970s. You’re the first explorers to reach Earth (underpants-thieving aliens aside), and you haven’t got a lot of data on this little blue marble. But your own planet has plate tectonics, so you’re familiar with the landforms caused by the process. [...]

“The town and its fluctuating fortunes are a humble reminder that much of human history has been influenced by the vagaries of the geologic processes that shape the land we inhabit, form the minerals from which we construct our civilizations, and produce the riches we covet.” -Lon Abbott and Terri Cook, Geology Underfoot in Northern [...]

Dr. David Johnston’s always there, on the volcano where he died. He was among the first geologists on the ground when Mount St. Helens woke up in March of 1980. He was a constant presence in the media. Dedicated and enthusiastic, bearded and grinning, completely at home with the hazards, he exemplified the ideal vulcanologist. [...]

We knew she was dangerous. People remarked on her beauty: “Surprisingly symmetrical (pdf),” “Fuji-san of America.” She was perfect, a flawless volcanic cone cloaked in deep green forests and mantled in brilliant white snow. Her former perfection was a sign of the cataclysm to come. When we see a volcano so exquisitely formed, her flanks [...]

Dear Mount St. Helens, Thirty-two years ago, I made you a get-well card. You’d just blown your top that morning, which looked like it must have hurt to my my five year-old eyes. I sat in front of the television with my crayons and construction paper while images of your roiling gray ash clouds filled [...]

Had you been walking along the trail at Chesterfield Gorge in New Hampshire last Sunday, you might have come across this scene: That is my dear friend, fellow Geokittehs blogger, Georneys author, and PhD survivor, Dr. Evelyn Mervine, demonstrating the lengths a geologist will go to when both geologists on the hike had to leave [...]

(I figured I’d do a repost by way of introducing you to Geokittehs. Evelyn Mervine and I – okay, mostly Evelyn – have discovered cats make excellent geological models. It’s amazing how much you can learn by correlating cats with science. I’m sure this can be done with just about any animal. Dog lovers are [...]

Were you afraid I was Meatloaf? We did two out of the three major rock groups, and then a whole week goes by, and perhaps some of you wondered if I decided two outta three ain’t bad. I assure you this isn’t the case. I just got a bit distracted by other things. I wasn’t [...]