Sundogs and Haloes - Alone in Antarctica: The First Woman to Ski Solo Across the Southern Ice - page 181

rising in rounded thigh-high moguls creating shadows on the
snow. My eyes darted from one patch of shade to another
trying to detect anything more distinct from the rest. My sight
returned nervously to one particular spot in the far distance.
I was looking at an object and not a shadow.
The anticipation was so acute that I must have stopped
breathing because I found myself short on air, my eyes never
moving from the dark object up ahead. When I noticed two
smaller flickering dark spots above the object, I was sure. This
had to be a depot marked by two crossed flags on long canes.
It could only be my resupply.
This was Thiels Corner.
Relief and joy flooded through me, spilling over as tears and
I wept out loud as I skied. I laughed and sobbed, feeling a
peculiar mix of elation and anguish, my vision distorted by
crying. I couldn't help but think of all those dark days on the
Leverett so long ago where any hope of reaching this point had
seemed so futile; all those desperate mornings battling with
my mind, all those evenings since leaving the Pole faithfully
marking my progress on an empty map, endlessly calculating
distances and days. Ill-defined snapshots of sensations or
places I had experienced in the previous weeks flicked in and
out of my mind. The snapshots were often no more than an
echo of a moment of fear, the remembrance of an instant
of wonder, a recollection of light falling through an abating
blizzard, or the detail of a wayward snowflake settled on my
jacket sleeve - but together they coalesced into a tapestry of
experiences that I could barely believe were safely in my past.
Whatever happened now, these memories were forever a part
of my life experiences and would shape me as all experiences
do, becoming an inextricable part of who I will be. There was