LOO-JW - Alone in Antarctica: The First Woman to Ski Solo Across the Southern Ice - page 61

The noise was deafening, a mechanical roar that sent mind-
numbing reverberations through the air. It was as thunderous
as a cargo train passing just inches away but with the plangent
reverberation of an earthquake. At first I thought the very
ground I sat on was shaking; then I realised that it was me,
trembling. I pulled a bear-paw mitt from one hand, holding
my palm horizontally in the air close to my face and watched it
quiver as affirmation. I felt frozen to the spot, unable to think
or act. This time, unlike on my first evening, I recognised the
sensation immediately. This was pure, instinctive, terror.
'Let the fear in,' my brain instructed, just as it had done
before, and for the second time in my journey I sat in the snow,
buried my head in my hands and sobbed.
I had never in my life felt so utterly beyond help, so reliant on
my own initiative and yet so incapable. My mind lurched from
one desperate scenario to the next: What if the tent split open
and my belongings scattered across the glacier? What if the
poles snapped and I was left trapped inside a flattened shelter?
What if the tent was slowly shredded until it was useless,
leaving me exposed and helpless?
As the tears subsided, so did the panic, and some semblance
of the experienced explorer I was supposed to be took over. I
pulled into the tent what was essential from my sledges and
kept the equipment in a deep pit I dug in the entrance of my tent
so that it wouldn't blow away if suddenly exposed to the wind.
I made marks on the inside of the tent to show the levels of the
snow shovelled around its sides so that I could monitor how
quickly it was being scoured away and I made food, wriggling
into my sleeping bag to eat in order to conserve the warmth it
generated. Afterwards I lay wide-eyed on my back staring up
at the roof which the squalls were beating and distorting like