Excerpts from In the Ghost Country: A Lifetime Spent on the Edge

In the Ghost Country: A Lifetime Spent on the Edge
By Peter Hillary and John E. Elder

Everything was white, and my mind had nothing to read: nothing was coming in, because everything was white. ... With nothing coming in, I believe now everything comes out of you, everything is leached out of you like salt is leached from soil by fresh water. That's how I came to think of it over the coming weeks. I knew what was happening. But they were very powerful experiences. For the therapists of the world I have called the process “psychological osmosis”. The white world is a merciless therapist, one that derobes you and your secrets. Unfinished business just bobs to the surface no matter how well you've anchored it to the riverbed of your mind. It's a cliché that a polar trip is a trip of the mind. It's a cliché because it's true. My very essence, my history and my heart, were to be projected in front of me.

An excerpt by Peter Hillary from The Rope, Chapter 10, Page 105- 106

When the dead friends lay down again, they took all colour and conversation with them. They drained the world, leaving again the burning emptiness to behold, the great white everywhere.

His grandfather taught him how to bury and raise the dead. As a small boy he had found it a sad and marvellous thing to do. Later, Peter Hillary found that he had to bury the dead over and over, and that any joy taken from raising them often left him as one was left after a night of visionary drinking: swearing you'll never do it again. He had spent many years holding them back, all the dead friends.

Well, isn't that how it is for everybody?

An excerpt by John Elder from The Rope, Chapter 13, Page 171

... The deep field cold soaks through everything, no matter how many socks and thermal suits you're wearing. It leeches out the warmth, freezes all moisture. Boots and bones are shattered, flesh freeze dried. A gentle gust of the deep sub zero burns the skin like acid. The cold eats you alive, quick or slow.

Throw gallons of boiling water six feet into the air, at minus forty, and watch it turn to snow. Snap. Instant snow. Antarctica is called a desert because the deep sub zero keeps the air dry as dry. The dry cold air sucks on the throat and tongue and the lungs, draining out one's bodily moisture. Freeze dried, mummified. Deserts are often called dirty places. Well, the deep south of Antarctica is sterile. Nil life. That's the sort of cold it is.

An excerpt by Peter Hillary from The Old Route, Chapter 8, Page 70

... Out there on the Polar Plateau, out there in the middle of that sparkling white plain, on a day of no chaos I walked with Mum again—as I had done many times on the shelf. But it was different to those times. On that last occasion she came like a “specter of the brochen”, when a shadow is projected by a beam of sunshine on to a cloud. She came like a ghost. Just as the smudges of my two companions drifted in and out of focus, so too did my mother's image with the wavering of my thoughts. As I have done before, I asked her: if she was still alive, would she come back for me? But my logical self leapt forward before she could answer.

An excerpt by Peter Hillary from Mother's Locket, Chapter 17, Pages 336-337