5 Quotes by Ethan Rarick

On a journey into the unknown, perfect progress is perfectly impossible.

They could neither go back nor remain in place. Like their wagons, they had no brakes, no way of stopping the high-stakes journey on which they had wagered their lives and fortunes.

Tamzene Donner was a woman at peace with the vagaries of life: “I am as happy as I can reasonably expect in this changing world.

Of the eighty-one people who had been trapped by the early autumn snow at the eastern edge of the Sierra, thirty-six had died and forty-five had survived. No one remained at the high camps. For the Donner Party, the journey was finished.

Clyman trying to warn Reed about the desolation he had just seen in the Great Salt Lake Desert. Remembering the conversation years later, Clyman said he told Reed to “take the regular wagon track, and never leave it – it is barely possible to get through if you follow it, and it may be impossible if you don’t.