Skiing in the Dark - Alone in Antarctica: The First Woman to Ski Solo Across the Southern Ice - page 211

way to sharpen my thoughts and focus my mind. It is a way of
seeking respite from the onslaught of life that can occasionally
become overwhelming and disorientating. I have spent days at
a time hiking in the mountains there without seeing another
human being - but this isn't true alone-ness. Even in the remotest
regions of the UK it isn't difficult to spot the occasional glint
of a rooftop and the vapour trails of aircraft during the day or
the distant orange cast of a town's streetlights at night. Even if
I hadn't seen or spoken to another human, the unmistakable
existence of mankind had been plainly all around me. True
alone-ness is something different. It is about losing the physical
and mental safety net provided by human ties, about having
no one but ourselves to rely on for safety or sanity. Humans
are social animals, we are programmed through evolution to
live within a tribe, and when we are beyond the reach of that
tribe it goes against the deep grain of a prehistoric trait as
fundamental as our senses or our need for children.
By being truly alone I had seen how deeply reliant I am on
human ties and in ways that were unexpected. It was not simply
a matter of having company to pass the time, or backup in
case of an emergency. During the expedition, I found that the
absence of others had shaped my behaviour, my thoughts, my
actions, my reasoning. I had seen for myself that it is human
relationships that bind us to place, time and purpose, human
relationships that make us who we are as individuals and that
our contentment, and our happiness, depend on those precious
human connections.