MOSES LAKE — It didn’t take long after the eruption on Mt. St. Heles on May 18, 1980, for life to begin to re-emerge on the sides of the mountain, according to biologist and author Eric Wagner.
Wagner, speaking in the Moses Lake Civic Center Auditorium on Saturday about the recovery of the area around Mt. St. Helens in the four decades of the volcano’s last major eruption, told the story of plant biologist Jerry Franklin, aquatic biologist Jim Sidell and geologist Fred Swanson and the helicopter trip they took to Ryan Lake, about eight miles northeast of Mt. St. Helens, in June 1980, about two weeks after the eruption...