The Indifferent Stars Above: The Harrowing Saga of the Donner Party

by Daniel James Brown

In the first half of the century, depending partly on where they lived, and how well, between a fifth and a third of all children died before the age of ten.

In other words, we are able, sometimes, to will ourselves to death, or at least to cease willing ourselves to live.

Death was the rule, life the exception. Life was at best a transitory dream, set in a universe that was entirely indifferent to his fate.

And almost always they attended church, for in the end Christmas was above all a religious occasion for most of them, an occasion on which to contemplate the light that their faith brought to the darkest time of the year.

Guilt revolves around feeling bad for what you have done; shame is feeling bad about yourself as a person because of what you have done. Guilt can actually be therapeutic, because inherent in the emotion is the idea that you can change your behavior and end the problem. Shame is a far more toxic emotion, because it implies that your character has been polluted by your actions. Deep-seated shame typically leads to a variety of anger-related emotional problems, particularly hostility and aggression.

Psychiatric researchers have only recently begun to understand that traumatic stress produces not just psychological changes but physical changes in the body, particularly in the brain.

In particular situations where men are able to take more than their fair share of resources, and inclined to do so, they sometimes do outsurvive women. But when scarce resources are shared more or less equally, the opposite is very much true.

Women, of course, generally have smaller bodies, and one would therefore expect that they would lose their core body heat to the outside environment more quickly than men. But in fact they actually retain core body temperatures better. This is partly because women have higher proportions of body fat and a higher proportion of that fat is located subcutaneously ( just under the skin). This, in effect, provides them with a layer of insulation and a survival advantage in extreme cold. Women also, on average, maintain lower skin temperatures than men, resulting in less temperature

Survival psychologists have since discovered that the people who are most likely to live through extreme, life-and-death challenges are those who open their eyes to the wonders of the world around them, even as their own lives hang in the balance. To appreciate beauty is to experience humility—to recognize that something larger and more powerful than oneself is at work in the environment. And humility, it turns out, is key to recognizing that in order to survive, you must adapt yourself to the environment, that it won’t adapt to your needs.

It reminds us that as ordinary as we might be, we can, if we choose, take the harder road, walk forth bravely under the indifferent stars.

hope is the hero’s domain, not the fool’s. Because we dare to hope—even when doing so might undo us—we leave the worlds we create behind us, swirling in our wakes, eternal and effervescent with the beauty of our aspirations.