Many time it is not advisable to reinvent the wheel or take new paths when the proven path is fine! Of course there are exceptions and that is the norm of new inventions but before you try to change the course of nature, take a deep breath and read about the Donner Party!
Morgan Housel in his novel Same as ever where he tells about the Donner Party in an aim to warn people to not to stray from the usual! Not to take a short cut which would very well cut short your joy!
So the Donner Party originated from Springfield, Illinois, and departed Independence, Missouri, on the Oregon Trail in the spring of 1846, behind many other pioneer families who were attempting to make the same overland trip.
The journey west usually took between four and six months and that was usual, but the Donner Party made a bad decision of taking a ‘Short cut’ and not following the established route and instead crossed the Rocky Mountains’ Wasatch Range and the Great Salt Lake Desert in present-day Utah!
The route turned out to be more tough and more long!
By early November, the migrants had reached the Sierra Nevada but became trapped by an early, heavy snowfall near Truckee Lake (now Donner Lake) high in the mountains.
They were supposed to cross this by fall and not peak of winter. What happened later is a gut wrenching account of human survival; killing, looting and even cannibalism…
By early November, the migrants had reached the Sierra Nevada but became trapped by an early, heavy snowfall near Truckee Lake (now Donner Lake) high in the mountains. Their food supplies ran dangerously low, and in mid-December some of the group set out on foot to obtain help. Rescuers from California attempted to reach the migrants, but the first relief party did not arrive until the middle of February 1847, almost four months after the wagon train became trapped. Of the 87 members of the party, 48 survived.
If you read this gut wrenching tale you would get to know with a shudder the things they had to eat to stay alive starting from OX hide and skins to even human meat. At first of the ones who died because of the cold and later those who were ‘taken care’ of. The apparent solace was that people were not ‘served’ meat taken from ‘their own relatives’ but ‘relatives’ of the others! When the question is of survival then the human becomes the true animal which he or she always was…
Historians have described the episode as one of the most fascinating tragedies in California history and in the record of American westward migration. Fascinating indeed; for those who go for trek and mountaineering especially to remote places, this is a lesson in survival.
Survival lesson and experience is also the hallmark of padma awardee Ajith Kumar…
Hearty congratulations
Shubh ratri…
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