First and last, the journey to Leper is, for Gene, a journey within himself. This trip, which he takes without Finny, brings Gene face to face with a different and disturbing vision of himself — the "savage underneath."
Before recounting his visit to Leper's home in Vermont — the "Christmas location" — Gene (as adult narrator) offers an extended recollection of his wartime service, made up, he remembers, of many nighttime trips. After all the training and travelling, he explains, the war was nearly over, and so he never saw battle.
Ironically, then, Leper's telegram represents a kind of draft notice for Gene. In answering Leper's strange call, Gene experiences what the war will be for him — not terrifying combat, but long, dark journeys without a clear purpose.
Now, as he travels through the night, Gene thinks about Leper's telegram, wondering — in a fantasy that rivals Finny's conspiracy theory about the war — if his friend's "escape" is really from wartime spies. Even the description of the remote Vermont area where Leper lives — and has now retreated — emphasizes this sense of danger, with its bitter cold and wind, its snow and isolation. It is, to Gene's mind, a "death landscape."
As Gene trudges toward the Lepellier house, he spies Leper standing at the window — alone, intent, immobile, not moving even to open the door. While Leper once skied happily to explore how animals took shelter in winter, now he himself desperately seeks refuge, hiding in his dining room, as if he were one of the beavers he once sought to study.
