Bald-Headed Men - Alone in Antarctica: The First Woman to Ski Solo Across the Southern Ice - page 142

Lying in my sleeping bag but unable to sleep I reached for
my camera and took a picture of myself. I don't know why,
perhaps it was an attempt to mark the day as different; taking
pictures as an act of ritual or ceremony rather than as a simple
matter of record. Looking at my self-portrait I was surprised to
see how I felt on the inside so accurately portrayed in my face.
I looked exactly as I felt; worn and fragile, my features heavy
with exposure to the cold, my hair as wild as Medusa after
being stowed under a hat for more than a month. My skin
was unmarked but the tinted light of the tent made me look
unhealthily wan. I looked into my own eyes curiously, trying to
assess what they told me, and decided that I was tested but not
beaten. There was still intensity in my glare at the camera lens.
Out of habit I reached for the locket around my neck and
held it in the palm of my fist but I avoided opening it to look
at the family picture inside because I knew it would only make
those smiling faces feel further away. As it was I seemed unable
to stop the cold and isolation around me seeping into my
thoughts and for the first time since leaving the Pole I gave in
to the emotion and allowed myself to cry.
The simple pleasures of my day-to-day life back home seemed
so far from my present reality that it felt barely possible they
could be real and not some vision of an imagined paradise. The
thought of curling up with a loved one on a sofa somewhere
warm with a glass of wine appeared to me then to be the
greatest luxury I could ask for from life - and the fact that at
home it was possible to experience such comfort on demand
struck me as the most exulted achievement of mankind. To
be free to experience such simple pleasure is a privilege I am
guilty of too often taking for granted. Over the last decade
my life has been almost exclusively pre-occupied by the desire