More than 40 years after Mount St. Helens blasted the landscape into a grey wasteland, an unlikely team of furry engineers has staged one of nature's most astonishing comebacks. But just as life has returned, a new government project could bury it all under fresh layers of sediment.
For decades, the land behind Mark Smith's Eco Park Resort in Washington looked hopeless. The 1980 volcanic eruption smothered the North Fork Toutle River valley in ash, mud, and rock, leaving little room for plants, fish, or wildlife to survive.
