Clear sky day and to the southeast Mount Baker’s white mass rises into the sky.
It looks so peaceful but only an idiot thinks it’s actually so. All these mountains are volcanoes, granted most of them around Vancouver are dead or dormant, but not Baker.
I know it well: I was forged in the belly of that beast. Unlike its neighbors who have given up, gone cold and solidified and died, Baker still steams, and the side is bulging out as the magma builds pressure like a bad summer sinus infection.
It’s coming.
There won’t be much lava, that’s for the planet’s runny noses like Hawaii. Baker has sticky silica-rich magma, a result of devouring the melted remains of crust forced down by subduction some 50-150 miles west and by the time it gets as far as Baker the indigestion is slowly bringing it back up by way of Baker’s belly.
No, Baker won’t run when it goes off, it’ll explode with a vengeful force that would put little miss Saint Helen to shame.
How much longer can it take the pressure and toxicity? No idea, but I hope when it goes I have a good view to the cleansing.
Let the mountain roar.
