In the poem sixteen steps to ice-house is speaker going up or down steps?

The poem "Sixteen Steps to Ice-House" by Carolyn Kizer doesn't explicitly state whether the speaker is going up or down the steps.

The poem focuses on the speaker's experience of the ice-house as a place of both wonder and fear. The steps themselves are a symbol of a journey into the unknown, and the number "sixteen" might represent a specific number of steps, or it could be symbolic, representing the unknown journey itself.

The direction of the steps is left open to interpretation, adding to the poem's ambiguity and leaving the reader to consider the speaker's experience and the meaning of the journey.