| Ice-clad Mount Rainier, towering over the landscape of western Washington, ranks with Fuji-yama in Japan, Popoocatépetl in Mexico, and Vesuvius in Italy among the great volcanoes of the world. At Mount Rainier, as at other in-active volcanoes, the ever-present possibility of renewed eruptions gives viewers a sense oŁ anticipation, excitement, and apprehension not equaled by most other mountains. Even so, many of us cannot imagine the cataclysmic scale of the eruptions that were responsible for building the giant cone which now stands in silence. We accept the volcano as if it had always been there, and we appreciate only the beauty of its stark expanses of rock and ice, its flower-strewn alpine meadows, and its bordering evergreen forests. -- Crandell, 1969 |
