31 years ago minus a few days a friend of mine showed up from out of town and wanted me and a couple of other guys to go up and fish Spirit Lake, at the foot of Mount St. Helens, and see what the fuss was all about with it's spitting and fuming. We declined because we were about to take a drift boat run down the Deschutes on the east side of the Cascades for a few days. This time of year is the famed salmon fly hatch, where fat redsides gorge themselves on two inch insects and the dry fly action is fast and furious. He went up to the volcano alone.
When we took out at Maupin we stopped in a burger joint for a meal and I noticed the headlines on a paper in it's rack - the mountain had erupted. On the way back over to the west side we saw the incoming plume of ash from the north. It wasn't until we got back to town for a day or so that we learned Bruce was missing. Since we knew where he was headed it was obvious what had happened. He was never found.
Because the eruption happened in the morning I like to think he was out on the lake in his float tube, casting to the risers when the pyroclastic flow hit him. I can think of worse ways to go.
before the eruption
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