#donner pass

“It was late afternoon and we were lying in the fuselage, preparing for night. My gaze fell on the slowly healing leg wound of a boy lying near me. The center of the wound was moist and raw, and there was a crust of dried blood at the edges. I could not stop looking at that crust, and as i smelled the faint blood-scent in the air, I felt my appetite rising. Then I looked up and met the eyes of the other boys who had also been staring at the wound. In shame, we read each other’s thoughts and quickly glanced away, but for me something happened that I can’t deny: I had looked at human flesh and instinctively recognized it as food.” Nando Parrado, Miracle in the Andes, pg 95.

nando described them ripping apart seats and searching obsessively for anything that could be eaten as food, even “strips of leather torn from pieces of luggage” despite knowing it would probably do more harm than good.

our girls were boiling damn belts in that same desperation. the donner party boiled ox hides that were their roof.

"The very next negatives in the file page were from the trip over Donner, a few days later. These are just a few of the photos I took of that memorable trip."