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Animals are also reappearing. Pocket gophers, once regarded as pests because they eat young conifers, may prove to be man's allies: their labyrinthine burrowing improves soil aeration and helps water flow through the compacted ash. Elk and deer have been spotted around water sources in the blowdown area. Though fish are unlikely to be seen in Spirit Lake for years, bacteria and algae have colonized the lakes to become the first link in a developing food chain. The insect population was heavily damaged, but scientists are now finding ladybugs feeding on the sap of green bracken ferns, which are emerging from the ash, and armies of black ants at work in a dried mud-flow. Honey bees are hard at it among the new blossoms.
Another threatened species, Homo sapiens, appears to be re-establishing itself as tenaciously as the lichens that grow on the mountain's rocks. A few people fled the area after last year's eruption, too nervous to stay or too stunned and depressed to rebuild their disrupted lives. A handful of local loggers and their families emigrated to Alaska to avoid having to live near the volcano. But most are making money cleaning up. Tom Henderson, a foreman of a team of loggers working to salvage what might be as much as $50 million worth of downed timber for Weyerhaeuser Co., gets $11.80 an hour, plus a $6-a-day hazardous-duty bonus. So does Norm Pettit, who came from Coos Bay, Ore., because "this is the only boom area in logging in the county." Jobs with cleanup and logging crews have attracted enough newcomers to push enrollment in the Toutle school district from a pre-eruption 502 children to a current 551.
Of those people who have remained, a few show signs of delayed stress, which Therapist David Hawkins of the Lower Columbia Mental Health Center refers to as "the Mount St. Helens syndrome." Many acknowledge that the eruption produced heavy emotional fallout. "It was a kind of religious experience for many people," said one sidewalk philosopher. "A lot of people living together thought maybe there is a God and then went out and got married. When it passed, they got divorced." Some people grew cautious or suspicious. Grocer Greg Drew and some of his friends have bought radio scanners so they can monitor police and forest-service frequencies to get as much advance warning as possible of any new explosion that might occur. "We are not sure they are letting out all they know," says Drew.
A few homeowners were going to leave but canceled when the rush of tourists kept property values from plummeting. Everyone hopes to cash in this summer when an army of tourists — officials say it may exceed 3 million — marches in. Welby Spainhower of Ridgefield has a trailer-housed store with a view of the mountain and a stock that includes ballpoint pens filled with ash, 48 types of T shirts, and a record titled Ashfall. Clara Ottosen of Silverlake has converted a barn into a museum filled with Helenic artifacts, including the burned-out Volvo in which National Geographic Photographer Reid Blackburn was interred by a blizzard of ashes.