Primary Succession

When you live near a volcano, you accept the risks and move on. Trudy had repeated the mantra whenever friends and family back East asked why she’d chosen to attend Washington State U, a grad school in the shadow of Mount St. Helens. Her words, spoken with the casual assurance of the newly adult, came back to her with a twinge afterwards.

May 1980, after

“Why weren’t you more prepared?” her mother asked when they finally connected—a more difficult feat in those pre-cellphone days—not “Are you both ok? Is your place still standing?”

“Ethan and I are fine, Mom,” Trudy said, as if that was the question her mother had asked. She heard the fear lurking beneath her accusation, felt the pressure of her worry. “We’re staying at a friend’s place in Portland until they clear us to return.”

She avoided mention of the masks they wore, the small mountains of ash that covered the ground outside and rose in plumes, reducing the color scheme of the neighborhood to greyscale. The debris followed them inside homes and stores no matter how carefully they brushed it off, like the sand she tracked in from the playground when she was a kid.

“How could you ignore the warnings—the rumbling, the bulge moving across the mountain?” Sounds of a TV blared in the background; Trudy suspected her mother had learned of the bulge only after the eruption.

Sirens pealed in the distance, then moved closer. She cupped her hand around the receiver to muffle the noise, reassured her mother as best she could, and ended the call.

Trudy might have anticipated her mother’s criticisms; Ethan’s caught her unawares. She didn’t fully understand the extent of the relationship’s shift until after the ash had cleared.

May 1980, before

Ethan and Trudy waited to evacuate until the last minute, less out of denial than from a general sense of uncertainty. Meteorologists and scientists debated amongst themselves, unsure of the timing and extent of the danger—whether St. Helens would blow catastrophically or merely cause a few landslides, a less dangerous scenario.

It was the sight of tourists and residents exiting Spirit Lake, the stream of cars moving steadily away from the mountain, that pushed her into action.

“I don’t want to be one of those fools who thought they knew better,” she told Ethan. “We could end up buried under the rubble, like the victims of Pompeii.”

 The authorities announced one last opportunity the next day—a brief window of time for local residents to retrieve valuables in their homes—before they’d set up barricades. The sheriff’s office planned to accompany the caravan, to prevent stragglers from staying behind.

Ethan and Trudy left school early; by the time they entered their building, her nerves were on edge. They rushed through the apartment, not speaking, jamming necessities into two duffle bags. She hit the bedroom first, yanking open drawers and closets, skipping over dresses and selecting jeans, leggings, t-shirts, then splitting off again to clear the rest of the apartment. She veered into the bathroom for medications and other basics, then hurried into the living room. As she entered, Ethan reached above the mantel, and, in one long motion, swept their framed pictures into his duffel. She made for the desk, rifling through the drawers, grabbing the checkbook, bills and coursework.

If the eruption had come after the tech revolution and not before, they could have simply packed their laptops and relied on the security of the cloud. At the time, she felt a panicking pull in her guts, afraid essential documents—birth certificates and medical information—left in the wrong place would remain behind. When a supermarket gameshow premiered in the 90’s, launching pairs of contestants through the aisles, flinging high priced items into carts, and making on-the-spot calculations of value, she experienced a feeling of vertigo, a sudden flashing back to that time before.

They opened the packed duffels onto the floor of Maurice’s apartment, taking stock of their current possessions.

“What’s wrong?” Trudy asked, after Ethan sat back abruptly.

“Our wedding album. Did we leave it behind?” He ran his hands through hair that was sweaty from exertion, leaving it sticking up in patches.

She scanned the piles. “I don’t have it—”

“I saw you go through the desk—did you look in the bottom drawer?”

Did he expect her to remember clearly that whirlwind of time? “I don’t know. I thought maybe you’d grabbed it.” She pulled out a thick document from her bag: “I went in the desk for our thesis manuals—it’s almost two years of work—”

“And nothing of our marriage. How efficient you were,” he said.

“We have what we need, for now. I figured we’d retrieve other belongings afterwards,” she said, but he’d already left to clean the kitchen, and, she assumed, to find space away from her.

Later, Trudy couldn’t remember if she even believed what she’d said.

May 1980, after

They watched the eruption with Maurice on a couch that doubled as their temporary bed. News stations covered the explosion and aftereffects 24/7; for two days video coverage projected an endless loop, the plume shooting up, terrifying but almost beautiful, forming into a mushroom cloud, the forest crashing down towards Spirit Lake. Split screens showed the peak before and after, the effect like a magic trick: here’s the mountain peak, then poof! it’s gone, a depression existing in its place. Trudy drifted in and out of sleep sitting up; no matter how much she resisted, her body kept shutting down.

Years after, she’d come to accept her reaction as a response to overwhelming stress, but at the time, felt shame that she couldn’t manage, at the very least, to stay awake and witness the devastation from a safe distance.

Ethan continued to act injured, but they had no privacy to examine their feelings, nowhere to go. When his advisor contacted him and Maurice to help collect ash for experimental purposes, he immediately signed up.

Trudy’s semester had finished, but her advisor expected her thesis project revised by the end of summer. She made half-hearted attempts to work, then gave up when she found herself rereading the same passages over and over and retreated to the couch with a dog-eared copy of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Ethan came back each night covered in ash, exhausted after a day spent in the field, yet with a barely contained excitement. His descriptions of the process, collecting ash on black paper to study crystallization—she hadn’t really followed his explanation—sounded simplistic, elemental.

“The university is forming a task force to study the eruption’s effects and potential regrowth afterwards,” he said one evening. “Professor Jenkins offered Maurice and I long-term positions on the team.” Maurice had stayed out to celebrate, leaving the two alone together.

“How can you want to stay? We don’t even know if the mountain is stable or if there’ll be aftershocks from the earthquake.” Or how many more people will be lost, she thought.

“So, you’re abandoning your program? Do you want me to give up, too?”

“I’ve started researching other grad schools; we could take the summer to apply for a transfer. Boston College has—“

“You’ve made plans already?” he asked, picking at his food.

“Don’t say that like it’s something underhanded I’m cooking up. It’s reasonable to want to leave.”

Ethan was silent, his eyes on his plate and not on her, lining up his knife and fork, setting them down together the way he did in a restaurant before his plate was removed. “I found the list,” he said, his voice definitive, steely.

“What list?”

“Your list. You left it in the bottom of the duffel.” He pulled a paper out of his back pocket and unfolded it.

Trudy looked at him, confused, before focusing on the paper—the back of a leaflet announcing a now-canceled end of term celebration, with her hurriedly scribbled list of essentials needed before evacuation.

“You didn’t forget the album in the heat of the moment—you never planned to grab it—or any mementos of us. They’re not on the list,” he said, holding it out to her as if displaying Exhibit A at trial, proving her crime.

They argued over the topic in bed, keeping their voices low. Trudy was tired of apologizing for the unintentional hurt and defending her actions. As the authorities released residents to their homes, the decision about leaving became more urgent. Ethan couldn’t pass up the opportunity for research with his mentor. She couldn’t bear the thought of staying close to the mountain.

Back in their apartment, they spent a week avoiding the topic. Ethan was gone for long stretches; Trudy spent her days alone with the TV on, monitoring for emergency alerts. The strategy did little to ease her mind—she jumped at loud noises, and twice felt her vision reduce to pinpricks when she heard a rumbling, before it registered as the sounds of a passing truck.

In bed, in the dark, the two clung to each other, her head resting on his chest, feeling the comforting rhythm of his heartbeat as she drifted off to sleep. One night Ethan reached out toward her, and they turned to face one another. She responded automatically, until her emotions, so close to the surface, flipped from desire to sorrow. She rolled away to cover her tears, unable to explain the sense of doom that hovered over her, over their home.

“Trudy, what’s going on?” He touched her shoulder, gently, but she didn’t trust her voice. After a few moments, she felt him pull his pillow off the bed with a jerk, and retreat. The apartment was empty when she rose the next morning; he returned later to find her huddled on the couch rereading Wuthering Heights.

“You’re always disappearing into your books. Are we never going to talk?” he asked.

Trudy took in his posture—feet apart, arms crossed. She was a literature major, for God’s sake; she’d always escaped into the world of books, and no one had ever taken it personally before.

“Me? You’re constantly in the field. I never know from one day to another if you’re coming for dinner.” She didn’t add—Or if you’ll make it home at all.  “I need you here, to help decide what we should do.”

Ethan was so full of his own plans and renewed sense of purpose that he missed her loss of interest in her work. In the wake of the eruption, classical literature no longer felt relevant, not a sufficient endeavor in which to dedicate her entire future.

“I have the chance to be a part of something big, to enter an experiment at ground zero,” Ethan said. “You’re asking me to walk away from a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”

She shook her head. “What if it’s not? What if you spin your wheels for years without results? Either way, I can’t do it, Ethan.” He’d vowed to stand by her, and here he was, putting those ridiculous black papers ahead of his safety, ahead of her.

“It sounds like you’ve made your choice,” was all he said.

The next day, she began dividing up their belongings. They owned little of value, primarily hand-me-downs, which she boxed up and labeled: “Ethan—camping gear,” or “Trudy—books.” She found the accomplishment of defined tasks to be soothing, almost therapeutic.

Ethan walked in after a shift to find her in the midst of clearing out the kitchen. She picked up a handful of silverware and held it out to him. “Your sister gave us this set when she married Bob—do you want to keep it?”

“Everything is efficiency with you. Practically the minute we make the decision, you’re packing up.” He pulled off his shirt and moved to the bathroom. “I’m going to eat with the crew tonight.”

After he left, Trudy packed the wedding album and most of their framed photos—carefully, swaddled in bubble wrap—and labelled the box, “Ethan—mementos.”

After, 1981- 2010

They lost touch—abruptly on her side, purposely—after the divorce was finalized. Her friends, who missed the memo, insisted on informing her of Ethan’s accomplishments for years afterwards, sending articles on his work at the Mt. St. Helens Institute despite her continued refusal to discuss him. She didn’t admit to the dreams that surfaced after each conversation, nightmare scenes from the eruption—entire forests thundering down the mountain, ripping away the earth and razing the cabins along Spirit Lake, the wooden buildings as insubstantial as cardboard cutouts.

She awoke, sweating, to the comforting solidity of her Newbury Street high-rise apartment and the sounds of life ablaze at all hours—music playing, laughter echoing down the hallways.

Later, if she felt the need, she’d knock on the door of a colleague in the psychology department who kept a rocking chair as an invitation for anyone to come talk.

“The dreams pop up in a knee-jerk reaction any time my ex is brought up,” Trudy told her the morning after a particularly vivid recurrence. “I can’t shake off the feeling I’m being sent a message.”

The dreams leaked into her consciousness and left in their place a wariness of new relationships. While she dipped her toes in the water, dating periodically, casually, her friends rebounded from divorce and painful breakups in a span of months, or a year. As they remarried and started families, she viewed their phoenix-like rise from the ashes with a mixture of admiration and head-shaking wonder at the reckless optimism of it all.

“Ethan will be remarried in three years, mark my words,” her mother said, sounding a warning and preparing Trudy to accept the inevitable.

She was off by half a year. Ethan called late one night, his voice soft, the tone he used when he was about to tell Trudy something she didn’t care to hear. “I wanted you to know, I asked my girlfriend to marry me, and she said yes. We’re hoping to start a family right away, so we’re marrying with a JP at city hall.”

“So…you’re engaged. Does she know we were married?” Not, what did you tell her about me, about us, about why we split.

“Yes, Katia knows my history.” He’d met Katia, a fellow scientist, on the research project—long after Trudy left, of course—and they’d bonded over shared interest in the work. Before he could reveal how he knew Katia was ‘the one,’ Trudy stopped listening. She blocked out the words that followed, shielding herself from any references to another woman as his ‘soulmate,’ or ‘love of my life.’

After the engagement, she ignored his occasional emails checking in or wishing her a happy birthday. They reconnected eventually via social media, unexpectedly, after almost two decades of distance. She’d joined Facebook to find old friends from Wash U she’d lost touch with, but failed to consider how other parts of her past would rear up.

Trudy held her curiosity about Ethan’s new life at bay until one sleepless night, when she opened the app and his profile picture appeared on her news feed as “someone you may know.” After the dam broke, she scrolled hungrily through his posts: vacation and sports photos, their son’s high school graduation. Pictured at black-tie events and family outings, Ethan and Katia stared out at Trudy with matching bright smiles.

Ethan, probably acting on the same nudge from Facebook, sent a friend request the next week, and she found herself accepting. They responded tentatively to one another’s posts—a congratulations for his son’s soccer victory, another for the cheek-to-cheek photo with his wife celebrating their 20th anniversary. He reciprocated when her university announced her appointment as dean of the department.

Trudy almost missed the direct messages he’d sent through her old AOL account.

Have you heard Wash U Vancouver is having a 30-year anniversary event about Mt. St. Helens?

Would you like to come out? You’ve never made it to the reunions—I hope that’s not because of me.

And then: Katia says to tell you she wants to meet you.

And when she said she’d make the trip: I’ll pick you up at the airport.

She smiled, remembering an Ethan mantra: You always meet people at the airport, or they won’t feel truly welcome.

 If Trudy had pressed her friends for their opinions on the trip, she’d have opened herself up to advice she had no plans to follow. Her mother, if she were alive, would have asked if she was nuts. She wasn’t seeing anyone at the moment, but, even if she was, the choice would be hers alone. She might regret digging back into the memories, but her curiosity won out.

May 2010

Trudy came off a delayed flight and walked out of the double doors into a chilly evening. She recognized Ethan immediately. He stood beside a dusty Jeep, slim in cargo pants and a t-shirt, his feet planted widely in the way she remembered. Up close, she registered his military-short hairstyle, grey hairs interspersed with the black. His skin was tanned deeper than in the past, and the wizened lines on his face spoke of a career largely spent outdoors.

They’d stood looking at each other self-consciously, and then she dropped her bags, and he enclosed her in a hug. She allowed herself to fall into the embrace, to remember how their bodies used to fit together, before she pulled away. On the ride they chatted about Boston, a city he’d never visited, before he dropped her off in the entrance circle of the hotel. She’d checked in and gone straight to bed, but remained awake, staring at the jewelry box on the nightstand beside her.

Ethan had gifted her the box in their senior year of college. Pressed together late one night on her narrow dorm bed, she’d unveiled the contents with shaky fingers. It was too soon for thoughts of marriage, but here was a little velvet box in her hands.

Inside, she received with relief and disappointment a large silver band with a garnet stone. Ethan’s graduation year and name of his high school were contrasted in black on either side. “Whatever happens, wherever life takes us, this is yours, forever,” he said, offering a token of his feelings, if not a promise for their future. She’d teared up at the gesture, but afterwards was unsure what she was meant to do with a man’s ring. Thick and heavy, it was too big to string on a chain around her neck; it remained afterwards in its velvet enclosure, tucked in her drawer.

Trudy waited in the hotel lobby the next morning nursing a cup of lukewarm coffee. The fluttering in her stomach gave away her unease waking in a strange place.

 Katia entered the lobby alone, wearing the same style cargo pants Ethan had worn the night before, a long-sleeved top made of a synthetic material, and a pair of worn-looking hiking boots. Her blonde hair, worn up in a messy bun, was free of greys. The pictures on Facebook didn’t prepare Trudy for how tall she was.

“Ethan wanted me to apologize—he was called in to a field assignment this morning. I wondered if you might like to hit the trails with me?”

Trudy weighed the possibility of an awkward outing against her interest in the woman Ethan had stayed married to for twenty years. Curiosity again won out; she went back up to her room to change, digging from her suitcase the closest thing she could find to athletic gear—leggings she’d worn on the plane paired with a long-sleeve cotton t-shirt sporting a Boston College logo across the front. She’d make do with her white Converse sneakers, sacrificing them to the task.

She removed the velvet box from her jeans.  She’d known she’d carry the ring back with her, hoping somehow to resolve whether to return it to Ethan. She worried even thirty years later  that he’d see rejection in her gesture, when she meant peace. She left the box on the dresser, the decision put off again.

Katia gave a mini-tour on the drive to the mountain, describing the land before and after the eruption. Trudy gave a little surprised gasp at the sign for Mount St. Helens National Monument Park.

“Reagan designated the area in ’82 as a national park. Are there particular trails you’d prefer?” Katia asked.

“It’s been so long—I wouldn’t know where to start.”

“Let’s take the lake trail; we’ll see a little of both worlds, areas of regrowth and glimpses of barren rock, unchanged since the eruption.”

Trudy let Katia lead on the trail, focusing on the path and matching her steps around roots or rocks where she could. Katia’s legs were longer, forcing her to find different footings. Physical exertion felt good after the plane’s confinement, but she found herself spending the entire time staring at the ground to avoid twisting an ankle or falling off a ridge.

When they paused for water, she asked about the pockets of bright yellow flowers she’d seen poking from barren patches of rock.

“Sedum—they’re aggressive growers, moving in and repopulating lifeless areas,” Katia said, replacing her water bottle in the backpack and strapping it into place systematically, the motions fluent from long practice.

They scrambled up the last few feet of a steep incline, pebbles flying down behind them. Trudy was relieved when Katia found a spot to sit and take in the view. The rock had yielded to fields of high grasses and even taller wildflowers in deep blues and purples. She recognized by name only the forget-me-nots, smaller and more delicate than other varieties.

“Why don’t I remember the wildflowers? They’re beautiful,” she said, waiting until after her breathing slowed to not sound winded.

“The trail here is part of the renewal; before 1980, this was forested land.”

  “I can’t believe the changes. I mean, I’ve toured Diamond Head in Hawaii; I didn’t think regrowth appeared after only thirty years.” Up close, the effect was stunning.

“Did you used to hike up in the hills, before—?”

The hitch in Katia’s voice betrayed the loaded weight of the word “before”—before the eruption, before the divorce. “I wasn’t much of a hiker, back then. We were busy with grad school; I remember writing papers on the living room floor. On weekends we explored used bookstores in Portland, or took in movies.”

“We’ve come regularly as a family, even after the time spent for work. It never gets old,” Katia said, smiling as she gazed into the distance, but when her attention returned to Trudy, the smile was gone. “Did you…do you miss the land? Do you regret leaving?”

“Washington was a temporary home. We came for school, but I’m definitely more an East Coast city girl. I changed my major to Psychology after…transferring, and stayed on at BC after graduation.” Teaching at the university allowed her freedom to pursue her own research interests during the summer months, fully supported by her department.

“And…you haven’t ever wanted to marry again? Sorry, that’s a personal question—”

Trudy waved away the apology. “It’s ok. I never wanted to go through that kind of breakup. Once was enough.”

Katia nodded, as if the answer satisfied other questions she had. “Shall we head back?”

Katia arrived alone again to pick her up for Wash U’s event. Ethan was running late; they stopped at his office, where he emerged in a sport coat and oxford open at the throat—business-like, yet approachable. Trudy’s physical attraction hadn’t died out after thirty years, but she wasn’t twenty anymore, and even if he wasn’t married, she could have let it lie.

In the auditorium, an usher passed her a program and she made her way through the modestly full lecture hall. She spotted Maurice with a few Washington alumni, and he waved her over. She flipped to the program’s last page, which listed Ethan’s and Katia’s bio, and the institute’s accomplishments: “Research conducted at the Mt. St. Helens Institute has informed practice in reforestation of land across the planet, including areas decimated by volcanic eruptions, wildfires, and floods.”

Ethan and Katia, loose-limbed and relaxed on stage, tag-teamed the presentation. The style mimicked their interactions in the car, finishing each other’s thoughts. A series of photos flashed on a large screen behind them, creating a time-lapse effect of the volcano before, during, and after the eruption. The first photos had a grainy quality, and Trudy wondered if she’d taken the pictures thirty years before.

“Ecological succession, also known as primary succession, happens after a cataclysmic event,” Ethan said to the audience. “The land undergoes a sterilization, with all life destroyed.”

“Yet, after the destruction, there is a turning point,” Katia said. “The first intrepid species fly in, the seeds take root, and break down the hard rock.”

A series of sketches on the screen illustrated the recovery of the mountain following an eruption: barren rock, the first bursts of new life emerging, followed by grasses and wildflowers, and then the permanence of trees.

“We’ve learned that growth is possible even in the harshest settings,” Ethan said.

Katia joined in: “Ultimately, the species that dominate after the eruption are more mature, less volatile.”

The screen switched off. “So, what’s next?” Ethan asked. “We believe the mountain will continue to evolve.”

“And continue to thrive…” Katia added.

“And continue to thrive,” Ethan agreed. “Shall we open up to questions?”

After the event, a group of WSU alumni drove to a local bar. Katia excused herself with a mention of an early morning but dropped Ethan and Trudy off on her way home. If the roles were reversed, would Trudy have possessed the same self-assurance, sending her husband out drinking and catching up with his ex?

On the second round, Ethan ordered two beers, then tilted his head to the door. They split off from the group, taking the bottles out to the terrace. She reached into her pocket where the velvet box rested, turning it over in her hand.

 “I hear Katia took you hiking,” he said as she sat beside him on the back steps.

Trudy pointed at him with her bottle. “You’re referring to the death march she dragged me on? You should have warned me.”

Ethan smiled and took a sip of his beer. “Yeah, she’s a monster. Even back when I was running, I knew better than trying to keep up with her.”

Trudy’s stomach twisted, attuned to his admiration of Katia. She forced a smile to cover the sensation.

“She likes you, you know,” he said, too quickly.

“That’s because we’re the same person—I mean, besides her rippling muscles.”

“Not sure where you’re going with this.” His expression was untroubled, but there was a tension in his voice, one she remembered from their long-ago arguments.

“Tell me this—she made the appointments when your son was younger, right? The dentist and doctor, playdates with other families?” Trudy took a sip from her beer, “She would have grabbed the checkbook, the paperwork—that day.”

“Maybe, but I decided early on she wouldn’t have left without the photo album.” Trudy sighed, and he held up his hand, calling for a truce. “Hold on. Do you remember the list—the one you wrote before we evacuated?”

“Of course I remember. You’re not saying you’ve kept it all these years?”

He shook his head. “No, but I saved it for a long while, used to stash it in my back pocket, to pull out and stare at when I was alone in the field. I kind of tortured myself, convinced I cared more than you did.”

“I’m sorry you went through that, that I couldn’t express my feelings back then. Words failed me after the eruption—maybe for the first time in my life.”

“Not your fault. I was obsessed with the idea of intent, and how it played out in our relationship. We both missed the elephant in the room,” he said, with a nod toward the view.

Trudy turned to face the three peaks off in the distance, Mt. St. Helens among them. The volcano had pulled Ethan closer over the years, closer than when they lived there before.

She raised an eyebrow. “Fun fact: post-traumatic stress disorder became an accepted psychological condition in 1980. Coincidence, you think?” She lifted the corner of her mouth in a grin. “You’ve heard the joke about psych majors entering the field to solve their personal issues?”

“But you’ve done so much more than that—the research you conducted, the articles you wrote about trauma after 9/11.”

Trudy met his gaze, surprised he’d followed her career. In the days and weeks after 9/11, she’d checked in on both her undergrad and grad students, reassured them she was available to talk or refer them for counseling. She set her beer down and shook off another glib reply. “Who could have guessed we’d end up following parallel paths—just in different fields?”

“I wish we could have figured it out sooner. We were both too young, too stupid to realize we should have reached out for help.” He stood up, brushing off his pants. “I’m heading home, in case Katia’s waiting up for me. Do you want to split a cab—I could drop you off at your hotel?”

 She paused, her hand on the velvet box, then released it. “No, go ahead, I’ll catch a ride with Maurice. I want to enjoy the view for a few more minutes.”

It would be her last night in the shadow of the mountain.