Ever Wild: A Lifetime on Mount Adams

2 Ever Wild
of no other Cascadian writer-photographers who have made their mountain
the central topic of their lives, as Darryl has with Adams; or who have
achieved a portrait such as only that degree of extreme intimacy, mixed
with powerful talents and dedication, could bring about. Ever Wild does
just that. Darryl’s photographs are as stunning as stunning can be, and his
writing familiar and fleet-footed; together, they make a masterpiece.
From the Ridge of Wonders to Hellroaring Ridge and all the rest of the
way around the mountain, Lloyd has long been striding that “high ridge”
where, Vladimir Nabokov said, “the mountainside of ‘scientific’ knowledge
joins the opposite slope of ‘artistic’ imagination”—and in this Book
of Wonders, he takes us there. Combining his meticulous observations
over the decades as master climber, fine naturalist, and dogged historian,
with his exquisite and robust photography, he paints Mount Adams whole
for both our hearts and our heads. And as the struggles continue to perpetuate
the mountain’s wildness against wrong-headed management and
chance, even as glaciers melt and rock walls fall, he never lets us think for
a minute that this volcano’s future is a certainty. “I always hope for rolling
back some of the harm that humans have done,” he writes, and he is still
working toward that goal. Ever Wild documents in fascinating detail the
challenges that have been met, and those that remain.
In the late sixties, I met and conversed with Supreme Court Justice
William O. Douglas at a student conservation action to fight a mining
threat to Glacier Peak in the North Cascades. One of my idols, along with
Muir, Marsh, and Brower, Justice Douglas was a major force for wilderness
protection throughout his long era on the Court, and off. His treasured
time in the West was spent partly in Glenwood, where the Lloyd family
became warm friends of his, including both the boys, well into their
adulthood.
Of his many books, including My Wilderness with its Washington
tales, Douglas’s best-known title is Of Men and Mountains. When I think
of the people especially identified with certain mountains—Humboldt
and Chimborazo, Hillary and Everest, Harvey Manning and the North
Cascades, for example—I can think of no one more twinned with a given
peak than Darryl Lloyd and Mount Adams. And I think if his old friend
Justice Bill could see this book, he’d say, “Yes—that’s what I had in mind,
when I spoke of men and mountains!”
—Robert Michael Pyle
Gray’s River, Washington
April 2018