"Skiing Antarctica"
by Beverly Burch

-February 2001, Liv Arnesen and Anne Bancroft become the first women to ski unaided across Antarctica

Middle-aged, we'd come south before
where raw fog hushes the screech of gulls,
the last edge of green disappears.
We'd heard ice hawk and moan, watched
sunset dissolve into sunrise, austral summer,
the three-month day. Icy lawlessness
at the earth's base, the unknown expanse
of its curve—an anchorage.

November, we strapped heavy sledges behind us,
skied into that bitter desolation—a solitary
human train, our strange locomotion
of arms and legs. The first frigid fields
were rippled, blown like dunes.
Frost-blue passages of pure shape, silence.
Through the Ulvetanna Range—switchbacked
slopes of splitting ice, the heat of our effort
nothing against the glacial chill.
One four-day blizzard, I tracked time
on the walls of our tent.

Finally tailwinds, glass meadows.
We opened our parasails, flew in a blur.
Snow blind, we were dreaming at noon,
eyes open. Unseen birds called from hidden
perches. Stars blazed in the whitewashed night.
Where were we? Lost in the swirl,
a sheeted hinterland of fear.
And found, through the opened portal,
freed of time, temperature, as if our bodies
had dispersed. We were nothing.
Just a wordless strumming
in the crystalline air.

Ontario Review #67