THE NORTH RIDING PROJECT

I landed in a town of ice and twilight.  All the buildings were raised above the permafrost a regulation four feet on concrete stilts.   The air was frozen still.  The apartment blocks hovered in yellow cliffs above the whiteness, and seemed recessed coldly into the sky.  The marshes and inlets of the Lena were frozen under seamless snow.  Snow turned everything else black.  People trailed along the streets in black overcoats and black hats, like loosed shadows.  By day the sun barely winched itself into the sky above the white hills.

Thubron/Siberia