Statement of Survival in the San Juan Country

Adapted from attributed statements by Alferd G. Packer, Colorado, 1874

We left with winter already upon the high country, though none of us liked to admit how late in the season it was. Snow came early in those mountains and settled deep between the timber and the passes.

By the time we were well into the San Juan country, game had thinned and our provisions were near spent. Men spoke less each day, not from agreement but from weakness. The weather did the talking for all of us.

There are places in that range where the sky narrows and sound does not travel right. A man can call and hear his own voice come back from another slope as if someone answered him. Hunger and cold make such things worse.

I have given different accounts to different men, and that has done me no favors. What I will say plainly is this: when I came out, I came out alone.

The country we crossed was not forgiving. Snow blinded the trail. Wood for fire was scarce in stretches where we expected timber. At night the wind moved over the ridges in a long, low tone that kept men from sleeping even when they had strength to try.

When I reached the settlements and was questioned, every answer sounded wrong in my own ears. There is no tidy way to describe a winter crossing that swallowed a party whole. People wanted a single clear story. The mountains had not given me one.

In Colorado, names are tied to places quickly, and my name is tied now to those gulches and camps. Men repeat it in courtrooms, in saloons, and by stove-light in boarding houses, each with a different certainty.

I do not ask for belief. I only say that the San Juans keep what they take, and when they send one man back, he carries the silence of five others with him.