Not far from here, just about an hour drive into the country hills, there are lava tubes called the Ape Caves that I started going through when I was in high school. It is said that four or five hundred years ago Mt St. Helens erupted. Unlike the pyroclastic flow of it’s 1980 eruption, the ancient one was with real magma that really flowed onto the forest and covered it up. When hiking the area where the caves are, there are lateral tubes and deep empty cylindrical holes where the lava surrounded either a fallen log or a standing fir tree. Centuries of decay took the wood away, leaving voids in the stone where it had been. I blame that eruption on climate change, brought on by indigenous people with their gas belching SUV’s (Steeds Unleashing Volumnously).

I took some of the children through the caves 20 years or so ago. On the way home, we stopped and roasted wienies at a boat launch on the river that led to the highway. These two ducks swam over, walked up to our cooking operation, and mooched from us until our supply was wiped out. Done with us, they waddled back, hopped in the water, and swam away like love birds now full.

I painted the scene at that time and it’s been gathering dust. Now it’s lent to my mother. I get it back when she’s no longer around to enjoy it.