Most songs for me start with an image but this song is an exception because it started with the title. For some reason the word stuck in my head and then the mental image followed.
This song explores the idea of leaving things behind and going off into the distance to the unknown. The mental image that I have when I wrote, and when I perform, this song is of two people walking in single file in a great expanse, leaving everything behind and not knowing where they are going.
The term “permafrost” refers to soil or sediment that remains below freezing. So, it’s not ice but ground that is frozen which which I think offers an interesting metaphor. While the two fictional people in the mental image for this song are walking along this permanently frozen ground into the unknown, the ground beneath them (and everything they know) is “melting beneath their weary feet” which is often how I feel about the world we live in these days.
One other aspect of this song is the strum pattern for the main riffs which is intended to represent the strides of the characters in the song. It kind of reminds me of taking long strides in an intentional effort to move forward and away from what was in the past.