Ever Wild: A Lifetime on Mount Adams

Darryl Lloyd
1
Foreword
The Mountain Loomed Above
When Darryl Lloyd refers to “a lifetime on Mount Adams,” he’s not fooling.
As one who has always tried to hew to the landscapes around me and who
most admires those who do, I was eager to read how my friend and consummate
modern mountain-man Darryl Lloyd would bring such a life to
print. And such a mountain!
I first met Darryl and Darvel Lloyd when they were running Flying L
Ranch, near Glenwood, their magical childhood home and later guest
ranch made and first managed by their parents. For years I taught butterfly
and writing classes at the Flying L for the North Cascades Institute.
From the Mardon skipper meadow outside the ranch house to the woodland
paths where swallowtails dripped from Columbia lilies, this place
was enchantment itself. But the Mountain loomed above, and the ranch
was the launch-pad for trips to the Elysian Fields known as Bird Creek
Meadows. Having the Lloyd Boys on hand to inform our impressions with
their singular knowledge and experience of the place made our visits into
rich expeditions
Like the best outdoor lives, this one is more memoir of the place than
the person. The author’s own personal stories inform but do not eclipse
the stories and faces of the actual place and its history, both natural and
human, which are of course just different faces of the same coin with no
clear edge between them. Darryl, and his intimate mountain comrade
(and twin brother) Darvel, have been physical, emotional, and intellectual
denizens of the Mount Adams ecosystem since they were born in its
beneficent shadow. No creatures occupy it with a better fit, and as I was
not really surprised to discover, this extraordinary book shows just how
such a fit was made.
Along the way, it paints a deep and rounded picture of the origins,
ordeals (from eruption to sheep invasion to fire, with many stops in
between), and order of business in the existence of this particular volcano.
Past, present, and likely future, I’ve never felt better acquainted with
a mountain, even its much-studied-and-reported neighbor, Mount St.
Helens. Once I wanted to write a book called Baker’s Dozen, which would
profile each of the Cascade volcanoes as though through one long, personal,
and twisty road-and-trail trip. But now I feel I could just leave out
Mount Adams, as it’s all been said already
Of course, each of the great Cascadian cones has had its able chroniclers:
John Miles’s great Komo Kulshan for Baker, Pat O’Hara and Tim McNulty’s
splendid Realm of the Sleeping Giant on Rainier, and so on. But I know
(Top) From the Selah and
Yakima valleys, Mount
Adams’ exceptionally broad
east face is unique among all
Cascade volcanoes.
(Bottom) The author stands
atop The Pinnacle (about
12,050 feet) in 1974, after
a spring climb of mount
Adams’ west ridge. In the
background is Mount
Rainier. (Darvel Lloyd)