Bald-Headed Men - Alone in Antarctica: The First Woman to Ski Solo Across the Southern Ice - page 152

I felt disapproval from the sky.
'Of course, I have you as a wonderful companion,' I mentally
transmitted to the sun to quickly redeem myself.
Occasionally as I skied I would conjure companions from my
memories of previous expeditions, imagining characters I had
travelled with in the past to be skiing alongside me, guessing
what jokes or conversation we would share. Sometimes I
would invent new teams out of friends who had never met
each other and tried to predict whether or not they would get
along. My imaginary companions never appeared physically
as hallucinations but as I skied I told myself that I was simply
taking a turn at navigating from the front and that if I turned
around they would all be there in single file behind me. This
self-deception was particularly useful at break times. The
demon voices that plagued me every morning would return
every time I stopped skiing, filling my head with convincing
and persuasive reasons why it was not only a good idea, but
bordering on imperative, that I call it a day and pitch my tent.
The thought of crawling into the shelter of the Hilleberg, of
escaping the wind and the cold, of being able to slide into my
waiting sleeping bag was as alluring as the wafting aroma of
freshly ground coffee. I resisted the urge by trying to think as
a leader rather than allowing myself to sink into the emotional
quagmire of my alone-ness. I made decisions for my imaginary
group rather than as an individual and told myself that there
would now be witnesses to any capitulation into apathy. It was
a complex self-deception but it seemed to work.
A team generates a bubble of security around itself even
though the physical hazards themselves don't change, in much
the same way that everyone tends to feel safer when travelling
in a group even though the reality may be that they are just as