Nature's Optical Illusion - Mount St. Helens, Washington

Some may not be old enough to remember, but back in the 1990’s there was a fad of artwork where you had to relax your eyes to see a 3-D image behind the picture. I’ve since learned that these are called autostereograms, and there is a long, scientific explanation of how they work. But I’ve always wondered how anyone came up with an idea like this.

If you relax your eyes and look “through” the picture, you might be able to see the fairly large shark. Some have found that holding the picture close where your eyes cannot focus on the picture will allow the 3-D image to come out. Source, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=75986

Mount St. Helens is famous for its astounding eruption on May 18, 1980. Half of North America was covered in ash over the next several weeks. 57 people were killed. 1,300 feet of the mountain top blew off, and 150,000 acres of forested timberland were wiped out.

Photo by Dick Lasher. Here’s the story behind the photo.

A rare photo captured by a college student the moment Mount St. Helens blew on May 18, 1980. Source: kpbs.org

Source: Boise State Public Radio

Mount St. Helens from the Johnson Ridge Observatory, July 2019.

The three visitor centers at Mount St. Helens are full of fascinating information and stories from the day of the eruption, with spectacular views of the mountain and its subsequent devastation of the landscape. But surrounding the natural area are rich, dense forests of 18 million Douglas fir trees that were all hand-planted by Weyerhaeuser Company as part of the cleanup and reforestation after the eruption. And driving through those areas, I couldn’t help but notice this:

At first it seemed like something was wrong with my eyes. As we looked closer, all those horizontal lines from the Douglas fir trees were creating this weird, blurry, out-of-focus optical illusion that reminded me of the autostereogram pictures.

While I still don’t know why this particular illusion occurs, sometimes the beauty in nature may just serve as inspiration for our creativity.