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A review by hafiansari
Miracle in the Andes by Vince Rause, Nando Parrado
5.0
“I looked down the mountain to the crash site. From this altitude it was just a ragged smudge on the pristine snow. I saw how crass and out of place it seemed, how fundamentally wrong. Everything about us was wrong here—the violence and racket of our arrival, our garish suffering, the noise and mess of our lurid struggle to survive. None of it fit here. Life did not fit here. It was all a violation of the perfect serenity that had reigned here for millions of years. I had sensed it the first time I gazed at this place: we had upset an ancient balance, and balance would have to be restored. It was all around me, in the silence, in the cold. Something wanted all that perfect silence back again; something in the mountain wanted us to be still.”
Several months ago I read Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors by Piers Paul Read, a detailed account of the story of the sixteen survivors of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571. It was informative and holistic but favored the presentation of fact over emotional drive, and that’s what makes Miracle In The Andes worth reading if you’ve already read Alive. Living this harrowing tale of sorrow, horror, cannibalism, perseverance, and human grit through the eyes of Nando Parrado is its own experience.
One of the many key insights that stuck out to me was Nando Parrado’s ruminations in the years that followed his time in the Andes. “I had been thinking of the disaster as a horrible mistake, as an unscripted deviation from the happy story of the life I had been promised. But now I began to understand that my ordeal in the Andes was not an interruption of my true destiny, or a perversion of what my life was supposed to be. It simply was my life, and the future that lay ahead was the only future available to me.” There’s something profound in the way he acknowledged that the traumatic events in the mountains weren’t an aberration of his fate or his destiny, but were a preordained part of it, and his acceptance of the fact is inspiring, as is the way he chose to keep moving forward in the lifetime to follow.
“Roberto rose and rummaged in the fuselage until he found some shards of glass, then he led his three assistants out to the graves. I heard them speaking softly as they worked, but I had no interest in watching them. When they came back, they had small pieces of flesh in their hands.” Cannibalism was addressed with the proper respect and detail it deserved, though it wasn’t as visceral or detailed on how bodies were harvested and consumed as much as Paul Read’s Alive. I don’t have any major insights on the topic, other than to say it is another testament to the courage and grit of the survivors and the horrors they had to endure. The only disgust I have on the topic is at the media for the sensationalized journalistic pieces on the survivors in the months to follow where a twisted rumor spread that no avalanche had occurred at midnight of October 29th and that the survivors willingly chose to kill several of their fellow passengers to eat them.
The focus on religion and Nando’s conception of God is another fascinating part of the book. Many of his fellow survivors talk about how they felt the presence of God on the cordillera, but not Nando, at least not in the way they did. “How can I make sense of a God who sets one religion above the rest, who answers one prayer and ignores another, who sends sixteen young men home and leaves twenty-nine others dead on a mountain?” This strikes the crux of the basis for which Nando constructs his views on God. Not as an Abrahamic All-Knowing entity with a Holy Book, but oddly enough as the embodiment of Love. It sounds corny, but contextually makes sense given all of Nando’s beliefs about the concept of Love.“Love is our only weapon. Only love can turn mere life into a miracle, and draw precious meaning from suffering and fear. For a brief, magical moment, all my fears lifted, and I knew that I would not let death control me. I would walk through the godforsaken country that separated me from my home with love and hope in my heart.” It was the love of his father that drove Nando to climb a mountain and trek 70 miles on foot to reach human civilization, after all.
And so this book is many things. It is a rumination on trauma, tragedy, loss, and how one can pick up the pieces when their entire world has shattered. It is a meditation on death, on how death is a constant, an eternity between which fits the heartbeat known as life, which itself is just a short, fragile dream. It is an exploration of love and what it means to love, and the strength and courage of the human spirit.
“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.” — Nando Parrado.
Several months ago I read Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors by Piers Paul Read, a detailed account of the story of the sixteen survivors of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571. It was informative and holistic but favored the presentation of fact over emotional drive, and that’s what makes Miracle In The Andes worth reading if you’ve already read Alive. Living this harrowing tale of sorrow, horror, cannibalism, perseverance, and human grit through the eyes of Nando Parrado is its own experience.
One of the many key insights that stuck out to me was Nando Parrado’s ruminations in the years that followed his time in the Andes. “I had been thinking of the disaster as a horrible mistake, as an unscripted deviation from the happy story of the life I had been promised. But now I began to understand that my ordeal in the Andes was not an interruption of my true destiny, or a perversion of what my life was supposed to be. It simply was my life, and the future that lay ahead was the only future available to me.” There’s something profound in the way he acknowledged that the traumatic events in the mountains weren’t an aberration of his fate or his destiny, but were a preordained part of it, and his acceptance of the fact is inspiring, as is the way he chose to keep moving forward in the lifetime to follow.
“Roberto rose and rummaged in the fuselage until he found some shards of glass, then he led his three assistants out to the graves. I heard them speaking softly as they worked, but I had no interest in watching them. When they came back, they had small pieces of flesh in their hands.” Cannibalism was addressed with the proper respect and detail it deserved, though it wasn’t as visceral or detailed on how bodies were harvested and consumed as much as Paul Read’s Alive. I don’t have any major insights on the topic, other than to say it is another testament to the courage and grit of the survivors and the horrors they had to endure. The only disgust I have on the topic is at the media for the sensationalized journalistic pieces on the survivors in the months to follow where a twisted rumor spread that no avalanche had occurred at midnight of October 29th and that the survivors willingly chose to kill several of their fellow passengers to eat them.
The focus on religion and Nando’s conception of God is another fascinating part of the book. Many of his fellow survivors talk about how they felt the presence of God on the cordillera, but not Nando, at least not in the way they did. “How can I make sense of a God who sets one religion above the rest, who answers one prayer and ignores another, who sends sixteen young men home and leaves twenty-nine others dead on a mountain?” This strikes the crux of the basis for which Nando constructs his views on God. Not as an Abrahamic All-Knowing entity with a Holy Book, but oddly enough as the embodiment of Love. It sounds corny, but contextually makes sense given all of Nando’s beliefs about the concept of Love.“Love is our only weapon. Only love can turn mere life into a miracle, and draw precious meaning from suffering and fear. For a brief, magical moment, all my fears lifted, and I knew that I would not let death control me. I would walk through the godforsaken country that separated me from my home with love and hope in my heart.” It was the love of his father that drove Nando to climb a mountain and trek 70 miles on foot to reach human civilization, after all.
And so this book is many things. It is a rumination on trauma, tragedy, loss, and how one can pick up the pieces when their entire world has shattered. It is a meditation on death, on how death is a constant, an eternity between which fits the heartbeat known as life, which itself is just a short, fragile dream. It is an exploration of love and what it means to love, and the strength and courage of the human spirit.
“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.” — Nando Parrado.