DARRINGTON — Finding the right words is no easy feat to keep pace with the legend that Arthur Ryals created with every bootprint.
One grandson remembered him as "a man so strong, he could carry a mountain on his back."
He was the kind of man who could snag young mountain goats with his bare hands.
He spent so many nights sleeping — no tent, just a sleeping bag — next to the area’s mountain goat herds amid alpine crags that the animals seemed to accept him as part of the landscape. Rumors of his cloven feet were exaggerations, but not by much.
At least 250 people showed up Sunday at the Sauk-Suiattle Tribe’s longhouse north of Darrington for a memorial service for Ryals, who died Jan. 18 of complications from injuries he received in a car accident. He was 81.
The longhouse ceremony was an unusual blend of various American Indian customs and down-home Darrington culture. The tribe’s Dave Bigby and Kenneth Joseph strummed Gospel standards such as "Old Rugged Cross" and "Will the Circle Be Unbroken?" on electric guitars, followed by a circle of tribal singers and drummers performing several powerful ceremonial songs. In between, and often underpinning various speakers, Paul Nyenhuis of Arlington sent echo-laden flute melodies floating through the old-growth beams and into every wooden corner.
Ryals was one of the few remaining links to other legendary mountain men of Darrington’s rich history. He worked for the previous generation of mountain men, rangers such as Harold Engles and Nels Bruseth. He was a fire crew foreman, a trail builder for both the Civilian Conservation Corps and the U.S. Forest Service, with a stint in the Marines during World War II.
He grew up in Everett but spent most of his adult life in Darrington. His tribal connections were in part because of his wife, Ethel, who grew up in the Yakama Tribe, and in part because the Sauk-Suiattle have strong cultural ties with mountain goats.
Ryals’ nephew, Bob Hoffman of Monroe, spent as much time in the hills with his uncle than anybody. He said Ryals’ passion for protecting the goats probably first started after years of hunting them in the ’40s and ’50s. Ryals noticed that the herds were thinning out way too fast.
"There was such a sudden decline," Hoffman said. "He got interested in (finding out) why. I think he started feeling sorry for them."
The interest became an obsession. He started following the herds up close, eating when they ate, sleeping when they slept.
"He would take eggs, suck the yolk and white out and fill them with dye," Hoffman said. "Then he’d take those eggs and hit a female goat."
Each goat got a different color marking so Ryals could keep track of individuals to determine how long they stayed pregnant and how long they nursed their young. Over the decades, he hauled countless medicinal salt licks into the hills and he sent fecal samples to university researchers to test for parasites. He argued strenuously with state and federal biologists that direct action was necessary to reverse the goats’ decline before the population crashed. He admitted in later years that his blunt demeanor probably rubbed people wrong.
His overall concern was warranted, though. State surveys showed the population in the Darrington Ranger District declined from about 550 in the 1960s to an estimated 115 in recent years.
Seated in the longhouse just before the ceremony began Sunday, Darrington native Dale Abbott lamented the irony of how long it has taken for news about the goats’ struggles to circulate.
"We’ve been saying that for 30 years, and now their best resource is gone," Abbott said.
Gone, yes, but Ryals made sure not all was lost. For the past few years, he worked with Shari Brewer of the tribe’s cultural staff to publish his mountain goat diary of field observations from 1946 to 1991.
Phyllis Reed, a Forest Service biologist at the Darrington Ranger Station, said biologists throughout the region are impressed by the data. While some of Ryals’ friends said it might be too late for the Darrington herds, Reed said she was still hopeful the goats could make a long, albeit slow, recovery.
At the climax of Sunday’s ceremony, Ryals’ son, Dan, a federal biologist from Twisp, stepped to the center of the longhouse. He picked up a red arrow from its perch in some elaborately arranged deer antlers and flowers. Notching the arrow in his bow, Ryals drew the string and fired it into a Pendleton blanket draped over some straw bales. A stuffed cougar stared back at him from atop the bales.
With tears, Ryals then removed the arrow and took the blanket off the bales, passing each down a line of family members until it was presented to his mother, Ethel Ryals, who tearfully accepted the gifts. She grabbed his hand, as well as that of her daughter, Luana Fox, as they sat on either side of her.
Marv Kastning, who led the ceremony, explained the ritual’s significance.
"The arrow signifies the passing on to the other side."
Reporter Scott Morris: 425-339-3292 or smorris@heraldnet.com.
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