Last semester in Environmental Geology, we traveled to Mt. St. Helen’s in Washington State to observe the pinnacle of Cascadian volcanism. Our subsequent projects involved examining the transformation of the surrounding landscape during and after the famed eruption of 1980. Trees were blasted to the ground, lakes were filled with debris, entire rivers were buried underneath dirt that was once perched on the slopes of the mountain until seconds before the entire mountaintop was destroyed by the explosion. The toppling of a mountain, a feature once thought to be a stable monument of sublimity fit for a postcard to advertise the recreational ideals of the American West, is the toppling of an entire perceived reality. After 1980, residents along the West Coast looked inland to their stoic, glaciated, and iconic mountains with a newborn fear of impending annihilation.
This is kind of what majoring in Environmental Studies at Lewis & Clark College is like. About halfway through ENVS 160 you look down at your mason jar and your recycling bin as you walk to class at the greenest college in the United States and all the truth you learned in kindergarten about turning off lights and faucets seems to disappear like the summit of Mt. St. Helen’s that simply isn’t there anymore because the Earth blasted it apart, flung it across the landscape, and smashed in into the ground with indifference. This moment is scary. This moment is allowed to be scary. This moment is also allowed to be the most exciting, fulfilling, promising, hopeful, and enriching realization of your academic life. It is allowed to be both. [DISCLAIMER: The ENVS faculty will NOT destroy your reality with the violence of a volcano. They are kind people who want you to learn and flourish.]
Transformation, whether of volcanic landscapes or of my own perception of reality, is more than simply “this is how it was; this is how it is.” There is always an in-between, a period of time where the “before” and “after” hang on a tipping scale that may or may not be calibrated correctly. I would argue that all things exist in this in-between state all of the time. Not only does the “before” remain beneath all the layers of “after,” but the “after” exists within the “before” as well. To return to the metaphor of a volcanic landscape, 1980 is not the first time Mt. St. Helen’s erupted. Mt. St. Helen’s (and Mt Hood, and Mt Rainier, and Mt Adams, etc.) have all erupted before. We can see the clues in the landscape. We know the paths of the lahars and the places of instability within the mountains. We can see the aftermath of the previous eruption in the “before” state of the next one. These volcanic transformations are not a one-time full-stop alteration; they are cyclical. Every passing moment is a new “before” and a new “after.”And this is what makes them intriguing. The crisis of Mt. St. Helen’s is an opening for so much incredible academic work, a landscape for endless exploration, and an apt metaphor for the common narrative of ENVS 160.
As I embark on my third year studying Environmental Studies at LC, essentially two years to the day since I first stepped into the Howard classroom that environed ENVS 160, I remember all the before’s and after’s of my ENVS journey. Before I knew what GIS was. Before I knew William Cronon and Hal Rothman and even Jim Proctor even existed in the universe. And where am I now? At a place where I can spin a geologic metaphor on a whim, that’s where. At a place where I favorite all of Bill Cronon’s tweets. At a place where I accidentally meet the chair of Reed’s Environmental Studies program at a coffee shop in Idaho because I’m talking too loud about the transformative powers of the railroad on the ski industry of the 1940s.
But this is only a new “before.”