Searching for Tamsen Donner Donner Party “Serviceberries show us another model

“Serviceberries show us another model

one whose impossible balancing of self

despite challenges and occasional hardships

in whose honor the region is named

Most reliable water sources

Searching for Tamsen Donner Donner Party “Serviceberries show us another modelTamsen Donner. For most the name conjures the ill fated Donner party trapped in the snows of the Sierra Nevada Mountains in 184647. Others might know Tamsen as the stoic pioneer woman who saw her children to safety but stayed with her dying husband at the cost of her own life. For Gabrielle Burton, Tamsens story, fascinating in its own right, had long seemed something more: the story of a womans life writ large, one whose impossible balancing of self,