To
Touch a Volcano: A Filmmaker's Story of Survival
May
18, 1980... The world was stunned by the raw power
that tore the top off Mount St. Helens. I joined a film crew attempting to
capture the first ground level shots of the devastation. Common sense told
me not to go—the mountain could erupt again at any moment. But eager
for
my first big break, I soon found myself the youngest of a team of five, camera
ready leaping from a helicopter into a wasteland of flattened timbers.
A three-hour shoot soon became a three-day struggle for survival. We stumbled in hot ash—eventually in circles, our compass rendered useless by magnetism in the ash and our contour maps made meaningless on the altered slopes. We were terrified and now hopelessly lost, when a second eruption of Mount St. Helens shook the ground. The atmosphere was charged with electricity, but it was deathly quiet. The blast rocketed over our heads to be heard by people 200 miles away.
Cold, hungry, and injured, we became the story. Unknown to us, we had been declared missing and presumed dead, Morale plummeted as the possibility of never getting out became a reality. It was then that I called out to God in my desperation.
Broken
trees lay scattered around me, one of them making the shape of a cross. I
heard an audible voice say, "Michael, look up to your left!" It
scared me, because no one was near. Minutes later I saw the blades of a rescue
helicopter rise over the hill exactly where the voice had told me to look.
We were saved.
Today, the volcano is an awe-inspiring national monument. But for me, Mount St. Helens is also a personal monument, a landmark which graphically reminds me that in any of life's disasters, the One who made the mountains, Jesus Christ, can be my rescuer. The One who moves the mountains offers the only solid ground to stand on.
Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed, yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken. - ISAIAH 54:9-10
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