Miracle in the Andes: 72 Days on the Mountain and My Long Trek Home

by Nando Parrado

Whether he intended it or not, he was teaching me the great lesson his years of struggle had taught him: Don’t let your head get lost in the clouds. Pay attention to the details, to the nuts-and-bolts realities of things. You can’t build a life on a foundation of dreams and wishes. A good life isn’t plucked from the sky. You build a life up from the ground, with hard work and clear thinking. Things make sense. There are rules and realities that will not change to suit your needs. It’s your job to understand those rules. If you do, and if you work hard and work smart, you will be all right.

Finally, I found my courage and slipped the flesh into my mouth. It had no taste. I chewed, once or twice, then forced myself to swallow. I felt no guilt or shame. I was doing what I had to do to survive. I understood the magnitude of the taboo we had just broken, but if I felt any strong emotion at all, it was a sense of resentment that fate had forced us to choose between this horror and the horror of certain death.

Many of my fellow survivors say they felt the personal presence of God in the mountains. He mercifully allowed us to survive, they believe, in answer to our prayers, and they are certain it was His hand that led us home. I deeply respect the faith of my friends, but, to be honest, as hard as I prayed for a miracle in the Andes, I never felt the personal presence of God. At least, I did not feel God as most people see Him. I did feel something larger than myself, something in the mountains and the glaciers and the glowing sky that, in rare moments, reassured me, and made me feel that the world was orderly and loving and good. If this was God, it was not God as a being or a spirit or some omnipotent, superhuman mind. It was not a God who would choose to save us or abandon us, or change in any way. It was simply a silence, a wholeness, an awe-inspiring simplicity. It seemed to reach me through my own feelings of love, and I have often thought that when we feel what we call love, we are really feeling our connection to this awesome presence. I feel this presence still when my mind quiets and I really pay attention. I don’t pretend to understand what it is or what it wants from me. I don’t want to understand these things. I have no interest in any God who can be understood, who speaks to us in one holy book or another, and who tinkers with our lives according to some divine plan, as if we were characters in a play. How can I make sense of a God who sets one religion above the r...

he told me the best way to find faith was by having the courage to doubt.

I have suffered great losses and have been blessed with great consolations, but whatever life may give me or take away, this is the simple wisdom that will always light my life: I have loved, passionately, fearlessly, with all my heart and all my soul, and I have been loved in return. For me, this is enough.

My hope is that you who are reading this book will not wait so long to realize what treasures you have. In the Andes we lived heartbeat-to-heartbeat. Every second of life was a gift, glowing with purpose and meaning. I have tried to live that way ever since and it has filled my life with more blessings than I can count. I urge you to do the same. As we used to say in the mountains, “Breathe. Breathe again. With every breath, you are alive.” After all these years, this is still the best advice I can give you: Savor your existence. Live every moment. Do not waste a breath.