056 - Fifty-Six

[TRANSCRIPT]

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Breaker, breaker, this is Whiskey Alpha Romeo, staring at the Rocky Mountains.

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Colorado is...it’s beautiful. I don’t know what I expected, but somehow the mountains are even larger than I ever thought they would be. They just... loom over everything. And yet, the sky is still so huge. I didn’t know the sky could be this big. I can’t quite explain it, the sky gets big in Kansas and Texas too but it just feels...it feels different here.

Have you been to Colorado, Birdie? Or seen the Rockies at all? I look at those and I think...yeah, I’m not driving over that. I do want to go to Wyoming—I mean, I’m so close—but then I’m going to go all the way south before trying to get to the coast. Seeing just how enormous—and how absolutely covered in snow—the mountains are, it’s obvious how the Donner Party happened. I can’t imagine trying to trek over those peaks, through that snow, with wagons and children and...

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Would it be easier, do you think, if I had people with me? Not getting over the Rockies, but any of this. Not that I’m having a hard time surviving, not really, but would it be easier to...I don’t want to say “stay sane”, but I—

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I don’t know what I’m trying to say. I just keep thinking about the Donner Party trying to get somewhere new, somewhere they could start a life, build a life, and then being trapped all together, basically just waiting to die. Was it better to know that you weren’t alone? Or was it worse because you’d failed to take care of the people around you? Is survival worth it if the only person that survives is yourself?

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