Skiing in the Dark - Alone in Antarctica: The First Woman to Ski Solo Across the Southern Ice - page 202

hit rock bottom and found there was no cerebral safety net.
But through my desperation a horrid fact remained unchanged:
there was no option but to find a way forward. I couldn't
afford to wait for better weather. As deep as my despair might
have been, my need was greater; if I wanted to reach the coast
I had to get out of the tent. I thought about the last time I had
decided not to move all those weeks ago. I remembered the
disappointment on later realising that my reasons had been
excuses, that it had been a self-deception borne by timidity. I
wasn't going to let myself down like that again.
Still snivelling, and with my belly full of the nauseating
static created by fear and anxiety, I struck camp and skied
into the whiteout. I felt rigid with tension at first, expecting
every slide forward to send me tumbling into a crevasse, but
the mechanical rhythm of sliding one foot in front of the other
relaxed me slightly and I drew confidence from the familiarity
of the movement. When my friend the sun finally melted its
way partially through the cloud cover, it lifted the light just
a fraction. It was a subtle change but enough to enable me to
see some faint contrast. It felt like a rescue and I noticed that I
was breathing easier. Now I had greater hope of being able to
spot any crevassing I came across. After several hours I began
to veer cautiously west, creeping ever closer to the eighty-third
line of latitude and into a landscape that I calculated to be
safely beyond the scope of the crevassed area. As I crossed the
line into the eighty-second degree, it felt like a death sentence
had been lifted. I felt released from a choking vice of anxiety
and I sensed that my celestial friend was as relieved as I was.
Turning my face skyward, I couldn't see the sun except for a
bright patch on the cloud-filled sky but I cried in gratitude
anyway. Not only did I feel secure that the ground ahead was