Why “Twinflower” Counseling

When Mount St. Helens erupted in 1980, scientists thought it may take decades, even centuries, before plants and animals would return.  The main eruption lasted nine hours.  It killed 57 people, sheared 1,314 feet off the summit and buried 234 square miles of forest.  Yet roughly two weeks later, ecologists returned to the site and spotted a tiny green sprout at their feet — a fireweed.

“It could not have come from a seed; fireweed would not set seed for a couple of months yet, near the end of summer. It had to have come from a piece of root that had somehow survived under all the ash and debris.  He imagined the new shoot emerging from the root fragment, pushing up through the ash once the ground had cooled. He imagined the probing spread of the slender tendrils below, the slow and tenacious unfurling of bud and leaf above, the eruption of the flowers, the establishment of the plant.”      — After The Blast: The Ecological Recovery of Mount St. Helens by Eric Wagner  

I was in the midst of a life crisis when I first read this story.  The image of magenta wildflowers pushing up through thick, grey ash gave me a symbol of resiliency to carry me through. 

Linnaea borealis, also known as twinflower, is another botanical that flourished after the blast.  It has two nodding flowers on each stem. To me the coupled flowers represent not only resiliency but also relationship — parent and child. Hence the name Twinflower Counseling.