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 the screen, and very upset and excited grown-ups said things I didn’t understand about you. All I really understood at the time was that you were an erupting volcano, and this was a Very Big Deal.