Miracle in the Andes, Nando Parrado

• After reading "Alive," I looked up Nando's story, written 30 years after the disaster. I was surprised by the impact of this book because I had just read the factual account, "Alive". But there was no feeling of repetition. If you've ever felt true panic, that is what Nando experienced nearly every moment for 72 days. This book places the reader "inside Nando's skull" and "in his rugby shoes, on the frozen slopes he was certain would be his grave." The emotions and philisophical questions raised here are profound.
• Nando doesn't believe in the 'conventional' idea of God, although he remains Catholic to this day. He was one of the strongest heroes because he summited a mountain and walked 45 miles through the Andes without climbing gear. He decided a million times over to suffer a little longer through the cold "as painful as fire." He got a rescue team, but he degrades his own courage saying because he was so overtaken by fear at the time. He was more afraid of dying at the crash site, so he left to get help, and became convinved that he would die trying. He likened it to jumping out of a burning building - choosing one death over another. He doesn't accept that prayers helped him get out of the mountains either, although he calls it a miracle.
• On his trek out, he summited the 17,000 ft. mountain and was devestated to see no farmers' fields, but just miles upon miles of more mountains. He writes, "In that moment all my dreams, assumptions, and expectations of life evaporated into the thin Andean air. I had always thought that life was the actual thing, the natural thing, and that death was simply the end of living. Now, in this lifeless place, I saw with a terrible clarity that death was the constant, death was the base, and life was only a short, fragile dream. I was dead already. I had been born dead, and what I thought was my life was just a game death let me play as it waited to take me."
• He ends his story by bringing it current, to his loving wife and family, and also gives a brief update on all the other survivors. The sixteen have a lifelong bond and many are close friends. They occasionally visit the graves at the crash site, and even keep up with the Chilean peasant who was their first outside contact. With all those memories to deal with, Nando's father counseled him just days after the rescue that he not let the plane crash be the most important thing that ever happened to him. In one way, Nando is gifted to know how just how fragile and special life is. He ends with a strong message to savor every moment of this precious gift: "Live every moment. Do not waste a breath."