A collection of legends and tales around Mount St. Helens.
Collection contains oral accounts from survivors who witnessed the unknown, Native American legends, urban legends, newspaper articles, and first-hand eyewitness accounts from the mountain.
When I usually talk about Mount St. Helens, people tend to believe I was alive to see the 1980 eruption, but to their dismay, I missed the whole thing by about four years.
My fascination with the volcano began right after 6 months of life.
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My family took me to the volcano and found that my lungs weren't well developed to handle the harsh air and low oxygen. At Windy Ridge, a wind blew over me and stole my breath. My family had to evacuate down to Cascade Peaks where medics were stationed. I barely survived that adventure...but I would return once again in just a few years.
Once more we went to Mount St. Helens when I was only four years old.
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Again, the air was still too thin for me to breathe, and I had trouble breathing due to my asthma and cystic fibrosis. My family began to consider the mountain a bad place for me and they decided to keep me away for quite some time. It scared the family terribly because they were there to have a good time and not rush me to the nearest ranger's station.
It wasn't until I was nine years old that I returned to the mountain, back to Spirit Lake.
My family allowed me to hike to the top of Windy Hill to overlook Spirit Lake. It was a beautiful hot summer day with a few low clouds passing by. The climb was long, and hiking up to the top was painful.
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When I reached the ridge, my grandfather had me pick up a piece of wood from the ground. The piece of wood that I picked up was moderately heavy. With the photographs done, he instructed that I put it back just as a ranger had begun his ascent up the hill.
I bent down to place it back and fell over and rolled down the steep slope. Like being in a washer, the world spun as I fell towards Spirit Lake. In terrible pain, I looked down at the lake and watched the water boil under me.
Glowing red eyes peered up; the water looked like it was growing...a hand was crawling up the slope. Voices above me told me not to move. I dare not budge as a ranger came down on a rope and told me to remain still for any movement would send me down the slope. They roped me in and I asked:
"Did you see it? Did you see the face?"
The ranger looks at me queerly, "There is nothing down there." He assures me as he mentally concludes that I must have bumped my head pretty bad.
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Since then, I became transfixed on learning just what I saw that day and after nearly 20 years of visits, I have seen more things out in the woods than I had ever shared...even in this book.
One of the things I have not seen however was the 'Big Harry Man'.
I learned all of the names: Selahtiks, Seeahtic, St'iyahama, Stiyaha, Kwi-kwikai but another name I learned was Bigfoot also known as Sasquatch.
These names were always interesting, but I had never seen a Bigfoot or seen any evidence of a Bigfoot in my ten years working at the monument.
But during one summer night in 2010, just as the sun went down near Redrock Pass, up on the mountain I began to hear some strange whooping noises that sounded like loud thumping roars. It was enough to give me the chills as I poked my fire.
Listening closely, those roars turned into what could be nothing more than the calls of the evening grouse. I
I chuckled to myself, "At least it wasn't one of those Mountain Devils!"
