Contemplation - Alone at Mount St. Helens

by Connie Fox

Title

Contemplation - Alone at Mount St. Helens

Artist

Connie Fox

Medium

Photograph - Outdoor Color Photo

Description

One person sits alone on a bench, contemplating a prime view of Mount St. Helens. The world-famous volcano is set against a gentle blue sky that is completely without clouds, except for steam or vapors that can be seen coming from its crater. Mount St. Helens, topped with some snow or glacial ice in late summer, is a National Volcanic Monument in the state of Washington, south of Mount Rainier. I highly recommend it for a day-trip.

This image is artistically rendered in dry brush and based on my original photograph taken at the Johnston Ridge Observatory, accessible from Spirit Lake Memorial Highway, Route 504. The rugged but peaceful terrain surrounding the observatory, once resplendent with evergreens, is now covered with tall grass, a couple of new evergreens, and brown, sun-bleached stubs of tall trees lost here more than thirty years ago. This scene shows some of the terrain but focuses primarily on the volcano itself and one individual lost in thought.

As of May 17, 1980, Mount St. Helens, in the Cascade Range, was considered one of the most perfect mountains in the world. But shaken by an earthquake that registered 5.1 on the Richter scale, the active volcano erupted at 8:32 a.m. on a Sunday morning, May 18, 1980. The huge crater shown here, and in other pictures in this album, was created by that eruption. The north face of the tall, symmetrical mountain collapsed in a massive avalanche of debris, much of it rock that one finds all over the bleak landscape of the blast zone. Some is embedded in twisted carcasses of evergreens bleached by the sun. Even our white car, parked in the driveway in Houston, Texas, was covered with a layer of dark ash from Mount St. Helens.

Copyright 2012–23 Connie Fox
All Rights Reserved
Nikon D80 - DSC_2910
10x8

Featured on the homepages of Beauty, FAA Featured Images, and Premium FAA Artists, January 2014. Featured in Comfortable Art, February 2014, Photographic Camera Art, August 2019, and Travel Art, September 2019.

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January 18th, 2014

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