As ever, then, she did not do as she had been told, but what she knew was wanted, and she opened the door. Outside, the silence was absolute. The snow muffled even the smallest of sounds, so she heard nothing, not the reindeer tied to the posts, not the titmouse in the tree, not the services inside. Right then the wind was blowing the snow so that the scene was almost picturesque: the ten wooden cabins, most chimney-less, with shutters for windows, pelts of various kinds nailed to the plank walls...storehouses on their stilts, some atilt; the cow-house with it's lonesome inhabitant, pacing in place to keep warm; the frozen well; three small saunas, each a few steps from the river... a wheelbarrow abandoned and now stuck until spring - and along the river the tracks of so much coming and going that the river seemed more road than ice, though following the tracks you reached on all sides only the unceasing tundra... They were entrapped by emptiness-it was like being at sea-the snow might well have been ocean, and they a caravan of small and weary boats, adrift. It was true what the Lapps said, it was always better to move than to stay; staying only fortified your sense of loneliness, that no visitors would ever come, that you were the only human life.