The cottage was nestled between scarves of snow-tipped mountains dotted with Siberian spruce trees spreading leafless branches. Edible peas ran a short length by the southern facing wall, strings of Ivy snaking up to the chimney.

When I stepped inside the smell of cinnamon candles and grease overran my nose. I flung off my puffy vest and propped my backpack near the front door near my boots. My old sofa from Tampa lined the center in front of a bookcase where I could keep my mementos I specifically brought on me: my grandmother's gold wristwatch, my mother's quilt blanket from her home in Vietnam, a crumpled orchestra ticket which was the last event I attended with my father, and a sterling silver elephant from my photo trip in India. The home felt much more, home-like. Amazing how it took them only a month to build this masterpiece.

As I explored the place, I mapped the kitchen to be about one-fourth of the area of my old kitchen, and the bedroom which linked them together was the size of my shed. A hammock which stretched from nail to nail was my sleeping place. I nodded involuntarily at the modesty of the place, and wondered if I would even feel homesick. Back in my flat I would down three cans of hard liquor a day just to relive burdens hurdling my path.

I slumped on the sofa, heaving the greatest sigh I ever made. I spoke my thoughts: "Ready for a new life."

I'm here in a place sponged of tourists. No need to make weekly trips to Costco. No blinding city lights. I didn't believe in that reincarnation crap, but right now I felt as if I was in a different body. Like my old urban self had died back there at the Attu Island airport, and tracked shoe prints on land where only environmentalists and birders visited. A stranger in a strange land.

Thick with motivation, I decided to get the planning stuff done before the homesickness struck. Normal things, fixing the generator for my electricity, hiking back to the airport to get a water purifier, reading Walden. When I wrote the last word, there was a knock at my door. I jumped; it wasn't everyday an animal knocked at your door. It seemed customary out here for a squirrel or seagull to touch foreign objects. Opening the door and spreading my sock-covered feet so the critter couldn't run in, my eyes dilated when a woman met my vision. Her features were rather boyish, paired with toffee skin and pinkish-red lips.

"Howdy," I greeted, immediately feeling spears rupture my rib cage.

"Didn't know my new neighbor would be from Kansas," she chuckled with a hint of Scot or Irish, adjusting her earflap hat that looked like a raccoon.

"And I didn't know I had a neighbor."

"Yeah, I live around that hill where you see the ocean," she said, pointing at a hill where a cottage similar to mine sat. "So where are you from?"

"Tampa," I said. "Come in."

She went inside, stopped to scan the room, then sat upright on the couch end.

"Must be quite a switch then," she smiled, peeling off frostbitten blue mittens to reveal bare white fingers, just like the spruce trees outside. She lightly set the mittens on his table.

"Yes, but now that I came here I don't think I'll ever go back. Enough about me, what about you?"

"Well there's not much to be said about other than being the first inhabitant of this island."

"I'm sure there is much to be said about that."

She grinned and rubbed her hands together. "Just like you, I grew tired of civilization's obsession of speed and spiritual limitation. I was a bush pilot working the Anchorage to Talkeetna area. Y'know, delivering mail and whatnot." She shifted her weight. "Telling you right now living here is an adventure with severe ups and downs."

"What kind of ups and downs?"

"It won't be an adventure if I tell you about them," she chuckled. "Lemme tell you- expect the unexpected."

"So you live by yourself?"

"Just me, myself, and I."

Something about her felt different. She felt alien, not like a little green person from Mars, like she knew something had been wrong with humanity and found a way to fix it. "Loneliness?"

"Oh yes, it's probably your greatest enemy here, worse than the cold and starvation."

"Well at least that won't be a problem anymore, right?"

She nodded but not all the way. Her mouth turned into a frown. Suddenly she got up, grabbed her mittens, put them on, and walked to the front door. "Well it was nice meeting you..."

"Herman. Herman Lewis."

"Meredith Clark." She turned the knob and floated outside.

As the door clicked closed, I went into the kitchen and heated up a cup of chocolate. As I played with the dials on the generator and drank the sweet concoction, flashes of Meredith overwhelmed my mind. Something about her made it seem I had just touched the tip of the iceberg. Not because she hid scandalous secrets, rather she seemed to be hiding behind a mask of herself. A closed bottle.

I flipped open a passage of Walden and began to read through "Solitude", my favorite section. But I found myself reading the same paragraph over and over. Meredith's coffee brown curls. Okay, I'll read another section, "Baker's Farm". Meredith's heart stopping grin. My mind couldn't process the words. Her hickory eyes. I shut the book.

I've had several one-night stands before with several beautiful women. All of them told me everything, flipping Pantene-coated hair and sipping Cosmos with me at the bar. None of them sparked interest in me other than their bodies. Meredith though— I felt like digging further through her head, her interests, secrets, past. But I had no idea why. Maybe it's so I don't become lonely again.

But I couldn't love again. It would be another bullet point on my running list of mistakes I've ever made in my life. Suppose we would just be friends, like I've always coaxed potential romances into. Emotional distance. What was it called? Right, building an emotional wall.