Steve Olson > Quotes

“Old-growth forests met no needs. They simply were, in a way that bore no questions about purpose or value. They could not be created by men. They could not even be understood by men. They had too many parts that were interconnected in too many ways. Change one part and everything else would change, but in ways that were unpredictable and often inexplicable. This unpredictability removed such forests from the realm of human perspectives and values. The forest did not need to justify or explain itself. It existed outside of instrumental human considerations.”
― Steve Olson

“If a church represents the efforts of the devout to invite God to join them in a place created by people, then a forest is a place where God already resides, and people can choose to recognize or ignore his presence.”
― Steve Olson, Eruption: The Untold Story of Mount St. Helens

“The world is impermanent--the eruption of Mount St. Helens showed how quickly and drastically things can change. Yet we still can be good stewards of the things we love.”
― Steve Olson, Eruption: The Untold Story of Mount St. Helens

“Maybe it's time to take a lot closer look at the bureaucratic decisions being made by some of our governmental agencies and to start reducing their powers back to where the citizens control instead of being controlled.”
― Steve Olson, Eruption: The Untold Story of Mount St. Helens

“Many of the construction workers chafed at the primitive living conditions. Still, many remember the experience as a great adventure and as their own contribution to winning the war. “It was exciting,” said one many years later. “I had three hots and a cot. I had a good-paying job that wasn’t too hard. I was free to come and go as I pleased, and nobody was shooting at me.” They were patriotic about what they were doing, even though they had no idea what the gigantic plants they were building would make. In 1944, the craft unions organized a campaign to ask everyone for a day’s pay, raising $162,000 in seven weeks. With the funds, the unions bought a four-engine B-17 bomber for the US Army Air Forces. Named “Day’s Pay,” the bomber flew from Boeing Field in Seattle to the Hanford airstrip to be presented to the Fourth Air Force. “This activity, conceived by the workmen and handled by them, . . . was the most effective single morale booster during the job,” Matthias recalled. It did more “to develop an attitude of teamwork and desire to help the war than any other thing.”
― Steve Olson, The Apocalypse Factory: Plutonium and the Making of the Atomic Age

“Volcanologists have a tendency to drift westward in the United States because that's where the action is tectonically. North and Central America occupy the western portion of a big slab of the earth's crust known as the North American plate, which is shaped roughly like an inverted triangle. The bottom of the triangle is in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean halfway between South America and Africa. The top two corners are north of Siberia and northwest of Greenland. This piece of the earth's crust is constantly jockeying for position with the tectonic plates that surround it. In some places, like Iceland, the North American plate is pulling away from an adjoining plate, and molten material is welling up to fill the gap. In other places, like California, the North American plate is slipping past an adjoining plate, often getting stuck and then breaking free in earthquake-inducing jolts.

But the most dramatic and dangerous of these plate interactions occur in the Pacific Northwest. There, in a line from southern British Columbia to Northern California, a small piece of oceanic crust is being forced under the edge of the North American plate at the rate of a few inches per year.”
― Steve Olson

“ALSO BY STEVE OLSON MAPPING HUMAN HISTORY: GENES, RACE, AND OUR COMMON ORIGINS COUNT DOWN: SIX KIDS VIE FOR GLORY AT THE WORLD’S TOUGHEST MATH COMPETITION ANARCHY EVOLUTION: FAITH, SCIENCE, AND BAD RELIGION IN A WORLD WITHOUT GOD (coauthored with Greg Graffin) ERUPTION:”
― Steve Olson, The Apocalypse Factory: Plutonium and the Making of the Atomic Age