Even in the direct path of the blast, the roots of plants survived and sprouted. Shoots pushed up through the ash. Firewood, one of the first colonizers after a forest fire, appeared. The spores of fungi were opened by the heat of the eruption and the fungi grew. The work of gophers was interesting to watch because it demonstrates how the earth and the animals interacted after the eruption.
Gophers usually tunnel searching for food underground.
One breed of gopher, the pocket gopher, lives on Mount St. Helens. A few of them survived and their efforts to dig new holes and find new food sources proved vital to the reclamation of the land for life. As they dug through the soil under the smothering ash, they kicked piles of this soil out onto the surface and formed piles of good soil where seeds could find a hospitable environment and let plants grow. One such plant that took root was the fireweed, shown here. Woodpeckers were delighted with all the dead fall trees.