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by other means? I remembered something the venerated desert
explorer Sir Wilfred Thesiger had written: that 'to have done
the journey on a camel when I could have done it in a car
would have turned the venture into a stunt'.
Was that all my journey amounted to - a stunt?
When it was time to leave I felt glad that they weren't driving
away from me, that instead I would be skiing away from them.
This way it seemed like a positive rather than a passive action.
My friends stood close by as I put on my skis and attached
myself to the sledges. With a few final hugs, pats on the back and
a promise that they would wait for me at the Pole I glided away,
turning twice to wave. When I turned the third time it was to see
that the glinting convoy was already on the move, reduced to
dark lumps on the horizon before disappearing for good. Before
I had skied more than a mile I was alone once again.
Perhaps it was my imagination but I like to think that
Antarctica could sense that I needed some solace. The wind
seemed to drop away to almost nothing and the light took on
a softer tone, blushing the snow with bronze and sepia which
made the landscape seem warmer and more inviting than its
normal gimlet glare. The sastrugi had died away during the
day so that I found myself on a blanched beach of wet silver,
the surface as sleek and shiny as the coat of an animal fresh
out of the water.
I thought back to the horrid days on the Leverett Glacier and
the gloomy week wrapped in bad weather in the mountains,
days when the Pole had seemed to be an impossible goal,
when just getting out of the tent for another day had been
a monumental struggle. And yet here I was with less than a
hundred nautical miles to go. I couldn't imagine what would
stop me now. The fear of the miles and days had melted away
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