In the middle of a lake sits a solitary house on an island. The water ripples around it, the surroundings are beautiful, geese and a pair of swans fly and swim, toads croak at night. It is evocative and beautiful in its context. Absorbing this as an observer on the mainland, Matheson was inspired to wonder about the opposite view. From the island itself, the experience would be very different – solitary, peaceful, exuberant when the natural elements are roused, but perhaps with an underlying loneliness of perspective as well.