I Had to Survive by Roberto Canessa

Author:Roberto Canessa
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atria Books

Chapter 33

When the book Alive was published in 1974, Nando and I were offered a chance to go on a book tour to promote it. Just a short while earlier, we had been among the most pitiful creatures on the earth, and now we were being painted as valiant heroes. Twenty-year-old masters of the universe.

Nevertheless, on my first transcontinental flight, I was terrified. Nando set a glass of water on his tray table. If turbulence made it slosh around, he would nudge me and say, “Should we get ready, just in case?”

First we toured the United States and then Europe. Everything should have been dazzling, since the journalists and celebrities we met were amazed at us and tried in turn to make sure everything was amazing for us. But all this amazement felt fake to me: They were only awed at the idea of us. They couldn’t believe they were face-to-face with these two hikers who had come out of nowhere to reenter society with the shadow of death still in their eyes. Besides, we were so young, so normal, that we didn’t seem real to them. And in fact, this image of us was not real.

In the course of the book tour, we met all kinds of celebrities. But the only ones I remember at all were the ones who felt truly genuine. The glitz and glamour of all the parties and dinners and the lavish attention never appealed to me. All of the praise for our “exploits” felt empty. What I truly appreciated was looking into someone’s eyes and, instead of finding awe or horror, witnessing compassion.

We traveled nearly ten thousand miles crisscrossing the United States, and another six thousand in Europe. With each new consecration of earthly glory, with each celebrity I met or party that was thrown in our name, the now twenty-year-old Roberto was getting further away from the nineteen-year-old Roberto of the mountain, further from Sergio Catalan and the shepherds Armando Serda and Enrique Gonzalez.

One night, I called Lauri back in Montevideo. I was just starting to realize that being rescued was only the penultimate obstacle. The final challenge, it turned out, was finding a way to return to a simple, honest life. I began by telling her, “It’s such a paradox, Lauri. I’m here, but it doesn’t really feel like me. I was this unlucky creature, and my only real talent was my will to live.” By the end of our conversation, I had taken the final step of my long journey: I asked her to spend the rest of her life with me.

I don’t think I’ve ever been able to express so clearly and poignantly what love means as when I collected those two keepsakes for Lauri: a stone and a wedge of fresh shepherd’s cheese. Although the stone was lost during the trek home, I had wanted to bring her a memento as a reminder of the terrible struggle I endured to make my way back to her. The piece of

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