Skiing in the Dark - Alone in Antarctica: The First Woman to Ski Solo Across the Southern Ice - page 203

safer but I noticed too that the sky had changed from solid
grey into a marbled quilt. Filtered sunlight played across the
forward landscape like the lambency of candlelight, giving the
terrain texture. The weather was breaking.
'Goodbye eighty-three,' I called out, taking a moment to
glance at the murky horizon behind me and the ground that
had caused so much upheaval.
Then I turned to the brighter view ahead and spoke a greeting
from behind my face mask. 'Hello eighty-two.'
Watching the horizon sharpen I felt that same stab of
combined wonder and despair that I had experienced so often
in Antarctica. Frequently, when ploughing into a storm, battling
with sastrugi or digging the Hilleberg out of drifts, there would
be a part of my brain that registered I was cold and lonely and
miserable - but there was another part of my brain rejoicing
in the adventure of being in such a dramatic environment and
relishing the discomforts. And so, when people ask me what
was the worst and the best moment of my journey, I realise
that often they were the very same thing and recall instants like
these that were the worst and the best simultaneously.
Looking back on my expedition I can see that the most valuable
lessons and insight resulted from experiences which, at the time,
felt like the most miserable lows. I found that the clearest and
most poignant recollections were those that had been the most
challenging. These were the 'best' moments because I saw the
'best' of me in them. The last twenty-four hours had been among
the most difficult of the entire journey but I would remember
them as some of the most precious because I had been stripped
to my lowest and still found a way to move on.
Like raking fallen leaves into heaps after a storm, I felt my
brain drawing together my wits and patching over the crater