Content area
Full Text
CASTLE LAKE OVERLOOK - Bundled against a cool and overcast sky, a small group of visitors looked out across the hilly landscape.
Eight miles away, shrouded in clouds spitting granular pellets of snow, Mount St. Helens stood at the head of a valley that was temporarily rendered lifeless in the span of a few minutes in 1980.
This is where Reid Blackburn lost his life.
Dave Kern, Jerry Coughlan and Dave Olson visited this same general area a quarter-century ago, when they dug Reid's belongings out of the mud and ash that had inundated their friend and colleague's Volvo sedan.
The three Columbian journalists returned to the site a month ago. They were accompanied by Fay Blackburn, Reid's widow, who was returning for the first time since 1981.
The visitors poked around the recently paved parking lot, glancing at maps and peering around the wind-swept ridge. The landscape has greened up with alders, ground cover and shrubs in the 25 years since Blackburn perished with 56 others in the eruption of May 18, 1980.
"I can't believe it's got this much vegetation, because it was just solid gray," Kern said.
Blackburn, 27, died while photographing the...