I stood more than 4,000 feet above sea level—close to one mile. As I approached the Johnston Ridge Observatory in the Cascade Mountains, the world opened up and I beheld something awesome: the glacier-flecked, smoking remains of a volcano.
Although it has carried the European name Mount St. Helens since 1792, many Native peoples speak of it as Loowit. The Klickitat peoples call it Louwala-Clough, the Cowlitz peoples call it Lavelatla (“the smoker”), and the Puyallup…