TRUE NORTH.

The American explorer Robert Peary reached the North Pole on April 6, 1909. With him were four Eskimos-- Oatah, Egingwah, Seegloo, and Ookeah--and Matthew Henson, an African-American guide. To Barbara Hillary, Henson is both a hero and a goad. Hillary is seventy-five, and a resident of Arverne, Queens. On April 20th, she will disembark from the Borneo ice camp, towing a fifty-pound sled and the wish to become the first African-American woman on record to set foot on the top of the world.

Hillary--who has a squat build and a powerhouse smile--was born in the San Juan Hill neighborhood of Manhattan (now near the site of Lincoln Center) and brought up in Harlem. Her father died when she was a baby. While her mother cleaned houses to support the family, Hillary immersed herself in books about endurance under extreme circumstances. "Survival 101 was 'Robinson Crusoe,' " she said the other day, before beginning her daily workout at the Cyberzone gym in Rockaway Park.

Hillary was a nurse for fifty-five years. "I always had dreams of travel," she said. "But much of travel, as I saw it, was so sheeplike, so John Doe." In 1992, she decided to take her first trip abroad, alone. (Hillary has never married, and, along with "one, Mind your own business; two, Maintain a sense of humor; and three, Tell an individual to go to hell when it's needed," she credits her air of youthfulness to remaining single.) "I looked around for a place that was affordable in air travel yet somehow virginal in terms of stampedes of tourists," she recalled. She considered Guyana. "When I called the consulate, the woman said, in a very curt manner, 'Why are you coming to our country?' And that was the worst thing she could have said. I was Guyana-bound!" Since then, Hillary has dogsledded in Minnesota and travelled to Manitoba to photograph polar bears. London, Paris? "You can go there when you're propped up in a casket," she said.

The North Pole trek, which Hillary intends to undertake with an outfit from Georgia called Eagles Cry ...