Thunderbolts for Jupiter: Is Mount Redoubt a god or goddess? You be the judge

I was amazed by the number of volcano experts who seemed to come out of the woodwork a couple months ago when Mount Redoubt started waking up. Perhaps a bit more subtle was the fact that the one woman I know who actually witnessed Redoubt's last eruptions in 1989 and 1990, had the least to say.

By the time the volcano erupted a month ago, I had lost track of all the expert opinions out there. Volcanmania was seemingly larger than sockeyemania, which occurs here every June.

Now having attended a free U.S. Geological Survey presentation on volcanology following the Mount St. Helens eruptions, having visited Volcanoes National Park in Hawaii no fewer than two times and having lived at 8,000 feet on the side of Mammoth Mountain -- a volcano in the Sierras -- I knew what all these Kenai area experts were offering was theory, not fact.

For instance, at the USGS headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., I picked up a brochure that told me "Vulcano was the chimney of the forge of Vulcan -- the blacksmith of the Roman gods ... the hot lava fragments and clouds of dust erupting from Vulcano came from Vulcan's forge as he beat out thunderbolts for Jupiter, king of the gods, and weapons for Mars, the god of war."

Polynesians, the brochure told me, said eruptions came from "the beautiful but wrathful Pele, Goddess of Volcanoes, whenever she was angry or spiteful."

This is science I can get my arms around -- figuratively, of course.

I remember the first time I went to the Big Island for a glimpse at Kilauea.

I peered from the edge of the volcano's crater, meandered through the now-cooled lava tubes and watched as molten lava flowed across the park road and into the sea. Then, despite the park service signs warning against such behavior, I picked up a few small pieces of Pahoehoe, the smooth, satiny, glass-like lava, to take home as souvenirs.

Pele was pissed.

Not only did my then-girlfriend and I break up when I returned to the Bay Area, but my car got smashed by the mechanic while at the dealership for routine maintenance, and the store where I worked went out of business.

I dutifully packed the three pieces of lava into a small box, addressed it to the Hawaii Volcanoes park headquarters -- with no return address, of course -- and dropped it in the local post office mailbox.

My luck changed almost overnight.

A couple of weeks ago, my wife and I were out for a Saturday drive and decided to head to Kasilof Beach, a favorite Mount Redoubt viewing spot.

We got there in mid-afternoon and joined the other car or two parked facing where the mountain should be. The view was totally obscured by a layer of low clouds, and we tried to remember if the mountain should be straight ahead at 12 o'clock, or slightly to the left at 11 o'clock.

Suddenly, a huge cauliflower-shaped cloud blew thousands of feet up into the air right before our eyes.

"Oh, there it is," I said, basing my belief on pure scientific observation.

"No kidding," I could almost hear my wife thinking.

As I fired away with our Nikon digital, first with a 300mm lens, then an 80mm as the steam and ash plume grew, I started to see lightning in the huge cloud. Proof: Vulcan was making thunderbolts for Jupiter.

Jupiter must have alerted Mercury, too, because within a matter of minutes, the beach parking area was stuffed with cars and Kenai Peninsulites armed with cameras.

Being the telephone Neanderthal that I am, I was unaware the Alaska Volcano Observatory folks had established an alert system via cell phones signalling when eruptions were occurring.

Back to the USGS Volcanoes brochure.

OK, so the text goes on to say: "Today we know that volcanic eruptions are not supernatural but can be studied and interpreted by scientists."

With sockeyemania soon to be upon us, the Vulcan and Pele lore will probably be more interesting to the ears of tourons from Anchorage dipnetting at our elbow in a few months, but just in case their eyes fill with suspicion, it might be a good thing to have some rather droll volcanology material to use as a fall back position.

* Volcanoes are mountains, but unlike those formed by uplifting and erosion, volcanoes are built by the accumulation of products from their own eruptions -- lava, bombs, ashflows and tephra: airborne ash and dust.

* Molten rock beneath the Earth's surface that rises in volcanic vents is called magma; after it erupts from the volcano, it is called lava.

* Geologists group volcanoes into four types: cinder cones, composite or stratovolcanoes, shield volcanoes and lava domes.

* Mount Redoubt is a stratovolcano.

* Some of the most beautiful volcanoes on Earth are stratovolcanoes: Mount Fiji in Japan, Mount Shasta in California, Mount St. Helens and Mount Rainier in Washington, Mount Hood in Oregon and Mount Cotopaxi in Ecuador.

* Most stratovolcanoes have a crater at the summit containing a central vent or group of vents. Lavas either flow through breaks in the crater wall or come through fissures on the flanks of the cone.

* As the cone grows from built up layers of lava, ash, bombs -- crusted over lava blobs -- and cinders, the cone can rise as high as 8,000 feet above the base of the volcano.

As I said, this stuff is pretty dry, but hey, when you're standing chest deep at the mouth of the Kenai or Kasilof rivers and all the little boats on the horizon are netting every sex-crazed red salmon trying to get to Cooper Landing, you have to have some sort of material to spin.

The actual volcanology stuff will be less likely to get you an invite to the funny farm, but the mythology will probably get other dippers to give you more space. Think about it.

Phil Hermanek is a reporter for the Clarion. He can be reached at phillip.hermanek@peninsulaclarion.com.