From the small window, the barren whiteness stretched out for miles. He felt chagrined to realize as the plane touched down they weren’t flying through the clouds, but had landed amongst mountains.
He stepped out from the terminal and took in the white covered pines dotting the nearby hills, and in the distance the mountains blanketed in snow.
The sharpness of the cold was a thousand knives on his naked skin. It stole the breath from his lungs, returning it with a burning sensation and white puffs of air that disappeared in the gray sky.
The sun was gone from the immediate place, but in the distance he could see where it reflected an ethereal light of the snow-capped peaks, and white-accented blue sky broke through the clouds.
There was purity in this place. An aura of the unblemished danced across the clouds. He thought it was beautiful, though he could not describe it.
He hadn’t realized how stark it was. He had expected more vibrancy, more life, but thinking about it, he realized it was winter, and that’s why he had come; to get away from the color and the noise.
He was in searching, not for anything in particular, but for some part of himself that remained unknown to him. It wasn’t running away, but more of a running toward that had brought him to Alaska.
He hadn’t realized the slogan on their license plates was “the last frontier,” but now that he was here, it felt like it. It was the furthest west he could go. That’s what he wanted.
He cleared the snow from the rental car and threw his bags in the trunk. The heaters strained against the cold.
He put the car in gear and headed in the direction of the fading white light.
