Travel Reference
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below it but provided a point of reference in my otherwise
seemingly dimensionless surroundings. I stumbled blindly
forwards through a hidden landscape, my skis slipping and
twisting under my feet as I pushed them over invisible sastrugi.
The turbulent wind worked with cunning to knock me off
balance, the force of the gusts pushing me roughly from one
direction then another so that I moved clumsily in a series of
lurches rather than a continuous flow. I could feel the heavy
resistance of my sledges ploughing through soft snow behind
me and the reluctance of different muscles and joints in turn
as my body blundered mechanically onwards. My knees in
particular grumbled at the extra punishment. I skied with only
one ski pole because in my other hand I clasped a compass
which hung around my neck on a long cord. I held it out in
front of me, flat on the palm of my mitt, so that I could keep
my eyes glued to the needle as I moved. That morning, as
always, I had used my GPS to find the correct direction of
travel and dialled the heading into my compass, turning off the
GPS immediately afterwards to conserve the batteries. In bad
weather I was forced to ski with my head bowed to watch the
compass, adjusting the direction of my skis with every stride to
match each twitch of the needle in order not to veer off course.
Without a horizon or any distinguishable feature to use as a
guide, if I lifted my eyes from the needle for so much as a few
paces I would find that I had immediately swerved from my
heading - even though I could swear I had done nothing but
slide one ski directly in front of the other. It has always struck
me as odd that the body apparently has no instinctive ability
to move in a straight line.
Now that the sun had reappeared, no matter how faintly,
it provided a fixed point that I could navigate by without
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