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Word Butter: Making sure my 'rumblings
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The first official day of spring is this week. It’s starting – FINALLY – to feel like it. Hopefully, we can now enjoy some milder temperatures and some sunshine.

As I was doing a little spring cleaning over the weekend, I found a little clown that I bought when I visited Portland, Oregon when I was in college. It’s about 2 inches high, and is made from the ash from Mount St. Helens. That little trip token started me to thinking.

If you aren’t familiar with what happened there, allow me to school you. On May 18, 1980, Mount St. Helens, located in Skamania County, Washington, erupted. It was the only significant volcanic eruption in United States history.  For two months after the eruption, there were earthquakes and steam-venting episodes. Nearly 60 people were killed, and hundreds of square miles were reduced to wasteland.

On that first trip to Portland, I didn’t get to make the trek up to Washington to view the site. But I did in the mid-90s. I had seen pictures of the area around the mountain after the eruption. For miles and miles, there was just, well, nothing.  There was a vast, gray landscape. No sign of life at all.

But when I visited there in person, I saw an entirely different picture. Life had returned. There were trees, plants, animals…everything you’d imagine a wilderness area should have. It was just beautiful. There was no sign that anything had ever happened there.

Because I lived in the Northwest for a few years, I did a lot of reading about the area and its history. I’m nosy like that. One of the things that fascinated me was the eruption of Mount St. Helens. The most interesting thing about the event to me was that for two months prior to the eruption, there were rumblings – and no one noticed.

If someone had just noticed those rumblings, nearly 60 lives could have been saved. A sobering thought, indeed.

We all have rumblings. Things we’re thinking about doing, wishing we had done, or swear we’re going to do someday. But someday doesn’t seem to ever come, does it?

I read this quote by Dawn Markova, and loved it…and loved that it speaks of just that…rumblings.

“I will not die an unlived life. I will not live in fear of falling or catching fire. I choose to inhabit my days, to allow my living to open me, to make me less afraid, more accessible, to loosen my heart until it becomes a wing, a torch, a promise. I choose to risk my significance; to live so that which comes to me as seed goes to the next as blossom and that which comes to me as blossom goes on as fruit.”

I don’t want to have rumblings that no one notices. Do you?