The Return from Nothing

There was once a road that lay across the icy and desolate regions of the northern world. It was a sloppy, choppy and cold path of dirt carved out by the cold, hurrying feet of a hundred generations, going anywhere but here.

It was a constant flowing depression in the land, like a riverbed. The ground at the bottom was a mess of watery holes, ruts and mud. The bank rose up steadily on both sides and leveled out to plains of snow and dead trees that reached into a never ending nothingness, like death.

To stand here and look back at the distance covered gives one’s heart a flutter: one has  not covered any distance. The constant gray clouds stretching back into the distance seem to lie and say that there is no leaving, no escaping the icy push of this barren land.

And ahead, if that’s the desired direction, is worse. After all, no matter the length of the journey here, all one can see ahead of them is a mountain that never arrives and a warm home that never comes into sight.