Two Lane Highway

 

Russ’ image of the shadow of a car in a stark landscape took me back to a similar scene, pictured here.  I made this image fairly mid-day on May 18, 1980.  That morning I’d been sleeping peacefully in a motel near Yakima, Washington.  It was a beautiful, clear, sunny Sunday in The North Cascade Pass and I was sleeping-in that morning, or so I thought.

I was rudely awakened by a loud knock on my motel room door, sounded urgent. I woke up and I went to the door and opened it. I was standing there in the open doorway, in my underwear, looking at a parking lot that should have been devoid of life, except so was everyone else! Well, something was obviously happening so I got dressed and went to the restaurant for breakfast and that’s when I learned that Mt. St. Helens had blown her top… about 300 miles west. Though my plan was to head west that was certainly out of the question, so I drove east instead, toward Spokane. I didn’t get very far, only to Grand Coulee where the Washington State Police had warned me off the highway, it was snowing gray volcanic ash. I found another motel with some vacant rooms and checked-in for an unscheduled stopover. Feeling the need to amuse myself in an otherwise adverse situation, the game of the day was collecting ash in empty film cans along Route 20. An occasional truck would blow by me as I did my thing in the middle of the road.  This one was the last to go by as the police had successfully closed the road.  I saved some ash as a souvenir, keep it in a vial on my desk.