Forty-Six - Alone in Antarctica: The First Woman to Ski Solo Across the Southern Ice - page 73

the light that was already diminished to the dullness of dusk
by the dense murk. There wasn't enough light to create even
the most ghostly of shadows and the absence of contrast made
everything appear unnaturally flat. The ridges and hollows, the
furrows and folds that usually gave the snow underfoot its
texture had all vanished as if a delicate pencil drawing had
been recklessly erased to leave just the grubby white paper
beneath. The world was reduced to a single dimension: flat,
homogenous, grey. It was a flawless Antarctic Ganzfeld.
Every now and then as I skied staring forward into the
void ahead I'd feel a sense of complete unreality that would
make my head spin. I'd feel dizzy, my eyes unable to fix on a
single solid point of reference and I'd be struck by the peculiar
sensation that I was falling. It was like an extreme form of
vertigo. Each time it happened I'd stop to turn and look at my
two sledges which still sat reassuringly on the ground beneath
them. Without a horizon they were the only clue as to the
division between snow and sky. My brain would need a few
moments to re-orientate itself, and I'd wait while it gripped
hold of the sledges as the only available fixed point in space,
until the dizzy spinning eventually stopped.
I quickly realised that I couldn't rely on my own senses
in these surreal surroundings. All perspective was lost. In
a world where the normal rules of physics didn't seem to
apply anymore I felt strangely vulnerable and the spongy
diaphanous mass surrounding me began to assume an eeriness
that I couldn't shake off. A ghostly black blob appeared in the
miasma and swam around in space randomly. Having given
up trying to work out what it was and resorting instead to
ignoring it completely, I almost skied right over it. The blob
was a flag marking the SPOT route. It had been firmly fixed