Ash and thunder Ash and thunder Ash and thunder
A UW Magazine reader shares his memories from the day Mount St. Helens exploded in 1980.
By Guillermo Castaneda | May 15, 2025
Guillermo Castaneda, '67, '90, is a name all Washington residents should know. Among his many accomplishments, Castaneda was the Yakima Valley's first Mexican-American physics and chemistry teacher who championed girls and minority students to pursue a STEM education. Castaneda helped farmworker families obtain medical and dental care and eventually established the first restorative dental clinic in the valley in 1978. And if you or anyone you know has ever used the Federal Supplement Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (known as "WIC") in Washington, you can thank Castaneda, who wrote the formal letter proposing the legislation in 1972.
Guillermo Castaneda at the 50th anniversary celebration of his electrical engineering degree
Castaneda sent UW Magazine a touching poem about the eruption of Mount St. Helens on May 18, 1980. In a letter explaining the poem, he explains that he composed it while watching ash fall from the sky during the blast.
“I took special precaution to note the precise clock times of the developing occurrences throughout the day,” Castaneda writes. “I was checking my pig pen at 9 a.m. in Granger, but the mountain had already exploded at 8:39 a.m.”
Castaneda wants to share his perspective for those of us who were not there. He recalls working at the Wenatchee migrant health clinic to establish a community medical and dental clinic in Moses Lake. But the ash after the Mount St. Helens explosion prevented highway traffic, he found a job closer to home in Granger. Because of Mount St. Helens, Castaneda says, “I became the first-ever Mexican-American physics teacher to set foot in a Yakima Valley classroom.”
Given his science teacher background, Castaneda hopes that “science students will try to calculate the ash’s speed in its mountaintop trip to our Granger home.” Comment below if you’ve figured it out.
The Day Saint Helens Mountain Blew Her Head
by Guillermo William V. Castaneda | May 18, 1980
A Sunday morning, nine a.m.,
As I was checking on my pen
For holes or places soft to dig
(Escape routes for a wiener pig,)
I heard a constant, rumble roar,
A sound I’ve never heard before.
My friend, you see, I’ll call him Ray,
Had promised me a swine that day,
So that’s why I was checking up
With eye and tug and coffee cup.
How odd, I thought, there is no end
To that big roar…no lightening friend.
My mind now suddenly changed tracks
From dreaming hams to getting back
To real-life thoughts of wondering
What acts to Earth that sound would bring.
How strange, that roar! I wonder why
So rapidly a darkening sky?
As I approached the kitchen door
I told my wife about the roar.
“I know,” she winced. “I heard it, too.”
And I replied, “I think She blew!”
Eight-thirty-nine, the radio said,
Mount Saint Helens blew her head!
“My pad,” I bade, elatedly,
To scribbled own this history!
My observations to inform
My descendants (those not yet born).
‘Our forefather,’ they’ll proudly show,
‘Survived the greatest volcano!’
“Nineteen-eighty,” I had begun,
“On May eighteen in Washington,
In Yakima, my county place,
My people, one and every race.”
Forty past ten, my wrist watch had,
Whence came a scratch noise from my pad.
Ingenious words, I thought, with rhyme,
Important writings, and with chime.
How dare, then, scratching interfere
With my great work of this great year?
“Get off my page, impertinent sand;
I’ll soon remove you with my hand!”
The granules flew but many more
Returned to even up the score.
“Why do you haunt me? To abash?”
And then a vision: It was ash!
For we were warned that if She yelled
Great tons of ash would be expelled.
“Inside the house!” I quickly cried.
My family, six, was soon inside.
We closed the doors, the windows, too;
We knew not, then, what else to do.
Oh, I had sailed on many a sea
But eruptions were new to me.
The silent, pepper ashes came
Like grayish mist and powder rain.
They smothered all and everything,
This strange material, bizarre thing!
Then, as I wrote and had my fun,
It brashly blotted out the Sun!
So darkened was that night at day,
It made the Total Eclipse play.
It made in me a fright begin,
This morning-night, eleven-ten.
What great disasters follow next?
Is this “The End”? And: Are we hexed?
My worries and my mild distress,
My sudden state of helplessness
Began to dwindle, tooth by tusk
As blind Fate transformed dark to dusk.
Sweet light appeared now, gradually.
“Hooray! Thank God! Normality!”
Such jubilation, soon beguiled,
Like stealing candy from a child,
For what I saw, I sadly say,
My favorite season turned to gray!
Lush Valley, hours before so green,
Now gray and dusty, so obscene!
An hour of mid-night at mid-day
Begat a world of smoky-gray,
A Death-like scene, so crude, unjust,
Ashes-to-Ashes, Dust-to-Dust!
I curse those sounds of constant roar.
I scorn the Ash-to0Earth they bore.
Week-in, week-out, officials say,
Or months to clear the ash away,
Or years before the experts know
The dollar-damage of the blow.
A measure of Saint Helen’s wrath;
A yardstick of her deadly path.
My tale is over now, I must go
To ponder on this grayish snow.
But ere I leave I offer thee
This plain, my simple history.
Oh yes! My pig I’ll get, it seems,
And so continue in my dreams.