From "The Ice:
"It appears out of the fog and low clouds, like a white comet in the twilight.
To enter Greater Antarctica is to be drawn into a maelstrom of ice. Ice is the beginning of Antarctica and ice is its end. As one moves from perimeter to interior, the proportion of ice relentlessly increases. Ice creates more ice, and ice defines ice. Everything else is suppressed. This is a world derived from a single substance, water, in a single crystalline state, snow, transformed into a lithosphere composed of a single mineral, ice.""