Ifestiophobia

It has been brought to my attention, by a longstanding resident of Seattle, that I failed to provide a full and accurate description of Mount Rainier in my last posting. I mistakenly missed off the most intriguing and yet worrying element of the mountain’s relationship with the city of Seattle. Without the archetypal disaster movie soundtrack to provide sufficient suspense to my narrative, the following statement may have less impact but Mount Rainier is an active volcano. I have unknowingly travelled over 4500 miles to live less than 80 miles from an active volcano.

After some extensive and anxious internet research it is apparent that my local volcano isn’t just any volcano. No, according to the US Geological Society, Mount Rainier is a stratovolcano and potentially the most dangerous and explosive volcano in the contiguous United States. So basically outside of Hawaii, whose islands are created and continually extended by volcanic eruptions, Seattle is the worst location in the US for proximity to the Earth’s molten magma. As the author of the US Geological Society article so delicately surmises, ‘Few are aware that Mount Rainier poses a deadly threat to all who live and play in its shadow.’

Unbelievable…. For years the closest I’ve been to a volcano is a bottle of Volic water and their incredibly irritating advertising campaign with the phony French accented voice over, ‘Drink in the treasure of the volcano’. (This I guess is why we love to hate the French, as only they could sell water in a poncey manner.) To now I discover that I leave right on top of volcano and can see this huge and menacing natural edifice from almost every area of my adopted city has given me a little cause for concern. Forget my fears over being shot by an over zealous moose hunter or local gangster-type; and my concern for the destruction of my vocabulary replacing 'pavement' with 'sidewalk' and 'aubergine' with 'eggplant'. These school-boy fears fade to insignificance when you have a volcano to contend with.

Cue dramatic and pulse quickening flashbacks to every CGI disaster movie and TV show that I’ve ever seen….

As I highlighted in my previous posting Seattleites simply refer to Mount Rainier as ‘the Mountain’ due to its prominence across the city. On reflection I have drawn the conclusion that this local diction is entirely too casually and flippant for my liking. As such, I will be adopting my own term of reference and will know refer to Mount Rainier as, ‘THE MOUNTAIN,’ and is to be said in an appropriately deep-voiced and ominous fashion.

You may not be able to detect this but I have a developed a certain level of irrationality about this whole topic. After consulting the reliable diagnosis tool for all mental health concerns that is the internet, I have discovered a name for my lava-induced fear: Ifestiophobia. This condition is common to actors in low budget disaster movies, geologists and Meg Ryan (See: 'Joe Versus the Volcano').

My first steps on the route to recovery from this affliction are to memorise the Washington State Emergency Management Division Disaster Preparedness plan and to start a support group for fellow victims of Ifestiophobia. Hopefully these steps will keep me from panicking until I actually see smoke rising from 'THE MOUNTAIN'.