Wednesday, four days out…

The American and European models weren’t converging. Really? I’m shocked! The American model drew the snow/ice line just to the north of us, the Europeans placed it slightly to the south. Neither was anywhere near Greenland. Snowfall amounts varied: an inch or two to several feet. Your guess was as good as mine. Nevertheless, the madness had already begun: grocery stores were war zones, gas stations were crammed with guzzlers, and hardware stores sold shovels, rock salt, and candles out in the parking lot. Tempers flared, nerves were frayed. Weather reports came in in every other minute while the phone lines to heaven were jammed with kids and teachers calling about school cancellations. Here we go…

 

Thursday, three days out…

It was a lovely, mild afternoon. I was humming a line from a Paul Simon song: “I get all the news I need on the weather report.” But we all know that despite the best of equipment and intentions, weather prognosticators don’t really have a clue about the when or where or accumulation of snow or ice. I’m sure they were trying their best, but just like the rest of us, they were looking out the window and sniffing the air. Nevertheless, they were giddy with excitement; this is why they became meteorologists in the first place. Six inches…ten inches…fourteen inches: did anybody really know what time it was or how much snow or ice we would get? Place your bets and get out your measuring sticks. At that point, all I really knew for sure was that it was freezing cold in Davos, Switzerland…

 

Friday, two days out…

It has started to snow in Dallas. Memphis was preparing for lots of ice. In the Florida panhandle, iguanas were dropping from the trees, stunned with cold. Maryland’s truth was still twenty-four hours away. “Power outages” was added to the script; “below zero wind chill” became part of the lexicon. Just as when the Maestro picks up the orchestra’s tempo, the beat quickened and the audience leaned in, rapt with a mix of anticipation and dread. Out in the streets, people were walking around, looking up at the sky; What’s on its way now?  Meanwhile, down at Mar-a-Lago, it was sweater weather on the links, but then spring training was only a month away.

 

Late Saturday afternoon…

All the shelves in the grocery store are now bone-bare; the first few flakes are just hours away. Or not, nobody really knows. Maybe it will depend on which side of the street you live. For some families, tomorrow will be Armageddon, for others, all the preparation might be for naught. But down at the local television station, the meteorologists were either crowing or hiding in the bathroom, while the general manager was in the back room counting her ad revenue dollars. Kids were either nervous about all the homework they hadn’t done or were waxing the runners on their sleds. I don’t know about you, but I vividly remember how it felt to wake up on a frosty morning and see the world washed white. Snow day! Much to my parents’ chagrin, I was too excited to roll over and go back to sleep, so I would run downstairs, put on my goofy hat with earflaps, buckle my galoshes, pull on my fingerless mittens, and dash outside to pack my first snowball of the day. For a kid (or a teacher—believe me, I know!), nothing can beat a snow day. Except a second snow day.

 

First light, Sunday morning…

When I woke up, it was the utter silence I heard first. Then from across the street, I heard the scrape, scrape, scrape of a solitary snow shovel. I ran—no, limped—to the window and peered out on a grey polar landscape. There were several inches of fresh snow and more was coming down by the minute,  Across the street, a Sisyphean neighbor was already shoveling his sidewalk. There was nary a snowplow in sight, but then we live on a secondary street, hardly a priority job on this winter morning—the DOT had bigger bigger fish to fry. I relished the silence: for a few heartbeats, this busy world was stilled and hushed under a blanket of pure white snow. All too soon, the digging out would begin, the snow would turn to slush, but for that one dreamy, breathless moment, it really was a winter wonderland.

 

I’ll be right back.

PS: Monday…

All schools cancelled!

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Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives on both sides of the Chesapeake Bay. His editorials and reviews have appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine. His most recent novel, “The Tales of Bismuth; Dispatches from Palestine, 1945-1948” explores the origins of the Arab-Israeli conflict. It is available on Amazon and in local bookstores. His newest novel, “The People Game,” is scheduled for publication in February, 2026. (It’s available for pre-order now on Amazon. His website is musingjamie.net.

 

Up until a week ago, I still had all my original parts. But that was then; now, thanks to one of the minor miracles of modern medicine, I have a new (left) knee. The surgery itself went well, and heartfelt thanks go out to my surgeon and all the selfless people in the OR and the Recovery Room who took such good care of me. I didn’t know it at the time, but surgery was the easy part. The real journey was yet to come…

Friends who had been there before told me. “Stay ahead of the pain.” “Take all your meds, even the scary ones,” they said. “Be sure to do all your physical therapy,” they advised. They were right, of course, but there was something else they didn’t tell me: “Don’t get discouraged. Recovery takes time so be patient and be a good patient. You’ll need a lot of help.” Now, a week into recovery, I know that to be true.

Trauma, even when it’s planned in advance and carried out by caring professionals, is, well, traumatic. Maybe you think you can see the pain coming, maybe you even intellectually understand it, but you don’t really feel it ’til it hits you in the solar plexus, or, as in my case, in the left knee. And, sadly, you have to feel it to truly understand it. It has to hurt to heal.

The first day after my surgery was a seductive honeymoon. The cutting was done, the worst was over. Wrong! On that second day, the pain blockers were still conscientiously doing their job so it felt like my recovery would be a piece of cake. Not only would I be able to stay ahead of the pain, there wasn’t that much of it. I ditched the walker, put away the heavy duty pain meds. Little did I know…

Since that day, life has slowed to a crawl, or, to be more precise, to a limp with a cane. Existence lies somewhere between a chair, the couch, and bed. Time is measured in twenty minute increments of ice therapy. Every six hours, there are two Extra Strength Tylenol; at other intervals, there’s an antibiotic, an anti-inflammation pill, low-dose aspirin for my heart, and a little pink pill to help keep me regular. (Sorry! Too much information?) There’s not much I can do for myself: the heavy lifting—literally, figuratively— falls squarely on my wife. Were it not for her, someone would undoubtedly find me covered in cobwebs when the snow melts. If there is a special line reserved for caregivers to enter heaven, she’s at the front of it.

Some day soon, I know I will turn the proverbial corner and begin to feel better. I wish I felt so certain about that other pain we’re all feeling: the endless turmoil and duplicity, the ugly viciousness on the streets of Minneapolis, the storm clouds over Greenland that threaten to unravel NATO from within. No unearned, gifted Nobel Prize can ever ease the pain of all the trauma we are suffering from a botched surgery performed by a glowering, demented quack and his twisted team of enablers. Should we somehow survive this mess, our recovery will be long and painful. But this I know: it will be worth it.

I’ll be right back.

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives on both sides of the Chesapeake Bay. His editorials and reviews have appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine. His most recent novel, “The Tales of Bismuth; Dispatches from Palestine, 1945-1948” explores the origins of the Arab-Israeli conflict. It is available on Amazon and in local bookstores. His newest novel, “The People Game,” is scheduled for publication in February, 2026. (It’s available for pre-order now on Amazon.) His website is musingjamie.net.

 

Last week, Sir Issac Newton would have celebrated his 383rd birthday. Remember Sir Isaac? He was the gentleman who, while “in a contemplative mood,” watched an apple drop from a tree and wondered why it fell straight down. That innocent observation led him to consider the existence of a universal attractive force—what we now call “gravity.”  But Sir Isaac didn’t stop contemplating there. He went on to formulate his three Laws of Motion that have become the fundamental principles of classical mechanics. His first Law (Inertia) posits that an object stays at rest or in motion unless some force acts on it. His second Law (F=ma) states that force equals mass times acceleration. But it’s Newton’s third Law (Action-Reaction) that leaves me musing today: “for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.” 

“I wonder,” I asked myself upon waking this morning, “what would Sir Isaac say are the equal and opposite reactions to the egregious acts we’re witnessing almost every day: the invasion of Venezuela and the middle-of-the-night extraction of its president and his wife? Or the murder of an innocent Minnesota mother—an American citizen!— by an ICE agent? Or threatening to wrest Greenland from a European ally, or even about building a gaudy $400 million ballroom while many of us struggle to make ends meet? What would he say? What do you say?

I’ve come to the conclusion that the Trump administration does not believe Newton’s third Law—or any other law, for that matter— has any applicability to its actions. They do what they do with presumed impunity. I keep waiting for either one of the so-called co-equal branches of our government—the Legislative or the Judicial—to react and rein in the Executive, but it seems that the President and his minions have moved beyond what was enshrined in the Constitution into an unimaginable realm of lawlessness and immorality, of coverup and spin.

When a bird flies, its wings push air downwards as an action force and the air pushes the bird upward as reaction force. Or when a ball hits the ground, it applies a force on the ground and the ground responds with a reaction force causing the ball to bounce back. Even to a non-physicist such as yours truly, this makes a certain amount of sense. What doesn’t make sense, however, is how Newton’s third Law does not appear to  apply to any of the people in the Trump White House or to their enablers in Congress and on the Supreme Court. There is never a reaction.

No doubt, some of you will disagree with me on this. I will assume that disagreement is founded on the political applicability of Newton’s Third Law, not on its foundation in Physics. But could we at least agree that actions do have consequences—either equal and opposite as science dictates, or the moral and ethical ones that exist in the metaphysical universe? Personally, I believe that those laws—the laws of karma—are as immutable as Newton’s and will ultimately hold the current culprits accountable.

And then there’s this: I had lunch with a friend the other day and asked him what he thought of all that was going on in Newton’s physical world. He said, “It’s just wag the dog—anything to shift the focus off Epstein.”  

Maybe Sir Isaac needs to contemplate a fourth Law: the Law of Accountability.

I’ll be right back.

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Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives on both sides of the Chesapeake Bay. His editorials and reviews have appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine. His most recent novel, “The Tales of Bismuth; Dispatches from Palestine, 1945-1948” explores the origins of the Arab-Israeli conflict. It is available on Amazon and in local bookstores. His newest novel, “The People Game,” is scheduled for publication in February, 2026. (It’s available for pre-order now on Amazon.) His website is musingjamie.net.

When one reaches a certain age, it becomes difficult, if not downright impossible, to not contemplate one’s own mortality. One minute, you’re walking along under blue skies, and the next, you’re face-to-face with a human being’s starkest reality: you will die. That’s harsh enough, but what makes it mean-to-the-bone is that there is no universal age for this phenomenon to occur. One of my writing pole stars, Norman McLean, wrote about his “Biblical allotment of years—three score and ten.” Actuaries—the professionals who make their living by calculating risks for insurance companies—have now set the bar for American men at 75.8 years, but the truth is mortality sets its own rules, has its own timetable. I’m now 77 years old, well on the sunset side of my life’s continental divide, and, maybe because I’m out in Montana, the landscape that Norman McLean loved so dearly, I’m beginning to discern my own horizon. That’s not a maudlin statement. It’s just a fact and I’m OK with it.

Before I go any farther, let me confess that in a few days, I’m scheduled to receive a new left knee. I still have all my original parts, but they’re beginning to wear out so I guess it’s time to start replacing them, or at least this particular one. Knee replacement surgery is common enough these days, but it’s still a milestone for me, so I imagine some of this mortality musing weighs more heavily on my mind than I give it credit.

But back to Montana. The West is old. Our own mark on this country is but a second gone on history’s atomic clock. Native peoples have been here much longer, but even they are relative newcomers to the mountains, rivers, lakes, and valleys that are the real time-keepers out here. Yes, they change, too, but they also endure in a way we do not. They are the sentinels and out here, they are more visible than what we see back east. In fact, it is impossible not to notice these landforms or to take them for granted. Awestruck, we pass through them, but they remain, commanding and impassive.

As far as I know, we are the only living species with the capacity to contemplate the span of our lives. On the sunrise side of our years, we don’t give a passing thought to our time together. But over here on the sunset side, I’m learning to appreciate the lost art of savoring moments: the laughter of children, the power of family, the evening light that paints these snow-covered peaks in etherial hues of pink and gold.

The irony in all this is, of course, that we only become aware of the passing of time when there is precious little left of it. I do not fear the other side of the last mountain; I just wonder what it looks like. Norman McLean didn’t write his first novel, “A River Runs Through It,” until he was 70 years old. That book defied literary norms because it blended separate genres of memoir, fiction, and narrative non-fiction. In the last decades of his life, he came to understand that writing, like life, is more about discipline than genius. He took great comfort in all that Montana had to offer him—its mountains, its rivers, its rising trout. Here is what he came to understand:

“Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world’s great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops—under the rocks are the words and some of the words are theirs.”

I think I’m beginning to understand.

I’ll be right back.

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Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives on both sides of the Chesapeake Bay. His editorials and reviews have appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine. His most recent novel, “The Tales of Bismuth; Dispatches from Palestine, 1945-1948” explores the origins of the Arab-Israeli conflict. It is available on Amazon and in local bookstores. His newest novel, “The People Game,” is scheduled for publication in February, 2026. (It’s available for pre-order now on Amazon.) His website is musingjamie.net.

 

Deep in the northwest corner of Montana, Whitefish is the gateway to the jagged peaks, lakes, and glacier-carved valleys of one of America’s most pristine treasures: Glacier National Park. The town of Whitefish and its eponymous ski resort lie just west of the Continental Divide on what was once the shared ancestral hunting grounds of three Native American tribes: the Kutenai, the Bitterroot Salish, and the Pend d’Oreilles. Trappers and traders crisscrossed this remote wilderness beginning in the middle of the 19th Century, but it was the logging industry that made the country literally go BOOM in the the 1890s. And when the Great Northern Railway found a gentler route through the mountains in 1904, Whitefish—then known as Stumptown—became a new dot on the map of the American West.

This is our clan’s second visit to Whitefish. We came last year, liked it, and so now here we are, back again, “only” twenty-four of us this time, scattered among two rented houses and the local ski lodge. Twenty-three of us are out on the slopes today despite a thermometer that reported the local temperature was -2. (Insert freezing emoji here.) Me? I’m in front of the crackling fire in the great room of the lodge with my computer, a book, and my cup of black coffee. Couldn’t be happier!

It wasn’t easy getting here. In our parcel of the party, there were seven sleepy adults and seven excited kids (age range four-to-twelve) on a 4am flight to Minneapolis, a two-hour lay over there, then another three hour flight to Kalispell, Montana. You can imagine all the ski bags, checked luggage, carry-ons with stuffed animals and all manner of winter weather gear, but we made it without losing anyone or anything. I think. And by the way, a great big shoutout to all those kind and hard-working Somali folk in the MSP Airport; that place could not function without you!

Two days ago, when we arrived in Whitefish, postcard snow was gently falling, but today, the sun is shining although it’s still bitterly cold. The skiers don’t seem to care; they’re up and out as early as the chaos allows. All bundled up, it’s difficult to tell who belongs to whom, but some innate parental instinct kicks in and off they all go. I pour myself another cup of coffee and throw another log on the fire. I’ll admit that up here in the lodge, I’m once-removed from all that chaos of skis and boots, helmets and googles, but, as I’ve said before, I’m an excellent vicarious skier and prefer to listen to everyone’s adventures over our evening meal. Plus, it’s warmer here and I’m not likely to hurt myself or anyone else, for that matter.

So, here we are, three generations, separate branches on a boisterous family tree: wild and free on the mountain, cozy and close around the dinner table. There is an ebb and flow to life here, a few tears but plenty of joy and memories that will last lifetimes. Yes, I may be once-removed from the maelstrom, but then someone has to write this postcard.

Wish you were here.

I’ll be right back.

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Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives on both sides of the Chesapeake Bay. His editorials and reviews have appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine. His most recent novel, “The Tales of Bismuth; Dispatches from Palestine, 1945-1948” explores the origins of the Arab-Israeli conflict. It is available on Amazon and in local bookstores. His newest novel, “The People Game,” is scheduled for publication in February, 2026. (It’s available for pre-order now on Amazon.) His website is musingjamie.net.

 

By the time Wally arrived, the bar was already crowded. It was a Thursday—Martini Night—and my posse of friends and holiday spirit(s) filled the room to overflowing. Roberto the bartender was slammed, but not so slammed that he didn’t notice Wally walk through the door. He arched an eyebrow in Wally’s direction and Wally nodded once. The game was afoot…

A few minutes later, I watched Roberto shake and pour a vodka martini into a chilled glass he had set on the bar. Roberto’s a pro, and the pour came flush with the brim. Given the jostling crowd in the room, it would be hard if not downright impossible for Wally to retrieve his cocktail without spilling half of it. I was closer; maybe I could help. I started to reach for the glass, but Wally laid a hand on my arm and shook his head. I retreated back into my corner conversation with a friend.

When I looked up again, Wally’s martini glass was still on the bar, untouched, but If I weren’t mistaken, it wasn’t quite so full. Someone must have taken a sip. I looked at Wally, but he was engrossed in a jovial conversation with Iffy and The Skipper. Roberto had moved on to his next concoction. Just at that moment, Boo came into the bar, reddened by the cold, and we fell into a conversation about must-read books: 1929 by Andrew Ross Sorkin and Ian McEwan’s newest novel, What We Can Know, a gender-bending detective story set in a future Britain ravaged by climate change. “Best book I’ve read in ages,” Boo said. I reached for a bar napkin to make a note for myself and happened to notice Wally’s glass was still right where Roberto had left it. But the volume had again been reduced by another sip, a bigger one this time.

Wally had moved on and was now laughing at one of Stevie Mac’s jokes. (Stevie Mac is an inveterate storyteller with an endless supply of jokes which he delivers deadpan like he’s telling you the truth.) Roberto was making The Skipper his third gin and tonic; Iffy was well into his second martini. The room was getting louder and livelier—plenty of good craic, as they say in Ireland. Wally’s martini was still in its spot on the bar, but damn if the tide wasn’t lower still. What was going on?

It was a chilly night, but inside, it was cozy. Was Wally’s martini evaporating? Impossible. What was going on? I looked for Wally in the crowd and saw him down at the other end of the bar talking to a woman I recognized but whose name I couldn’t recall. I could tell he was enjoying himself—his cheeks were flushed, but his martini was still sitting on the bar, right where Roberto had left it, only now, it was nearly empty. 

Just then, Wally turned and caught Roberto’s eye. He smacked his lips gave him a thumbs-up grin. He also raised a finger in a way that was the universal sign for “one more.” Roberto nodded. The glass on the bar was now empty. Roberto set about making another Wally-special and when it was ready, he removed the empty glass and put the fresh martini right in the same spot. Wally’s eyes met Roberto’s—another wordless exchange that spoke volumes. No one else was paying any attention—they were having too much fun—but I was gobsmacked. I was also determined to get to the bottom of the untouched glass mystery, so to speak.

Angelique came over to chat, in French no less. I forgot I was on watch. When I remembered my duty, Wally’s fresh martini was gone. I don’t mean the glass was gone; it was right where it had been but was now as drained of liquid as a swimming pool in December. 

That was when Wally sidled up to the bar and flourished an air pen in Roberto’s direction, the universal sign for his tab. Roberto turned to the cash register and produced a check for two martinis. Wally signed, left a generous tip, and gave Roberto a sly wink. And just like that, he was gone.

They say osmosis is the natural phenomenon by which a liquid moves across a semipermeable membrane creating equilibrium. It’s a process crucial for the cells in our bodies, in fact, for life itself. Just another of life’s many little miracles…

Happy Holidays, and, please, God, a happier New Year. Cheers!

I’ll be right back.

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Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives on both sides of the Chesapeake Bay. His editorials and reviews have appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine. His most recent novel, “The Tales of Bismuth; Dispatches from Palestine, 1945-1948” explores the origins of the Arab-Israeli conflict. It is available on Amazon and in local bookstores. His newest novel, “The People Game,” is scheduled for publication in February, 2026. (It’s available for pre-order now on Amazon.) His website is musingjamie.net.

 

Well, we’ve broken the seal on this winter’s snowfall. It was hardly a blizzard—a mere frosting, in fact—but enough to whet our collective appetite for the white stuff. Our friends to the north and west may feel otherwise, but here on the Eastern Shore, winter’s first official snowfall was genteel, polite. There’s surely more to come, but right now, I feel I might be able to make friends with snow.

This morning, my wife is in the kitchen making chili. Not chilly like it is outside, but the warming kind that we’ll consume in front a cozy fire this evening. I’m in the living room, thinking about all those hard-working Somali immigrants up in frigid Minnesota who are wondering if they made the right decision while trying to learn a language in which “chili” and “chilly” are not only different parts of speech, but also sound exactly the same even though spelled differently and have completely different meanings. Welcome to the wonderful world of ESL, my Somali friends, and while we’re on the subject, watch out for ice and ICE!

There was a time when snow meant sledding and snowballs and big rubber galoshes that snapped shut. We bundled up with scarfs, clip-on mittens, and hats with ear flaps and we couldn’t get enough of the white stuff. Years later, in my schoolteacher life, snow meant something more: a two-hour delay, or, even better, a day or two off. Then there was the year we got dumped on, and by the third or fourth day of containment, I had a bad case of cabin fever and an aching back from all the shoveling I had to endure. (OK, that last part isn’t true: I was fortunate to live on my school’s campus, and the maintenance crew—most of whom came from Central America—kept my sidewalk snow-free.)

Anyway, it’s still early in the season and snow isn’t yet a nemesis. In fact, for reasons I still can’t explain, in a few days, I’ll get on a plane and head off to Montana for a “ski” vacation with twenty-three (I think) other family members. I put “ski” in quotations marks in the previous sentence because I’m the only one who doesn’t ski, but no matter: there’s an enormous stone fireplace in the lodge and my Kindle will be loaded with all manner of good reading material. At night, when all the skiers are back in the nest, I’ll be more than content to hear about what transpired on the mountain. I’m an expert vicarious skier!

I’m sure there will come a day in February or March when I’ll scream if I see one more snowflake falling out of a cold, gray sky, but for now, this snow is still mesmerizing, lovely. And it’s not just snow’s visual impact, but also the muffled silence that comes with it that soothes my noisy soul. When I awoke this morning, I peered out on a thin blanket of snow. Nothing was moving; it was as if the whole world had rolled over and gone back to sleep. So I did just that.

In the opening line of William Shakespeare’s play “Richard III,” the evil protagonist Richard of Gloucester muses about “the winter of our discontent.” Despite the fact that the War of the Roses is ending and the House of York is ascendent, when we meet Richard on stage, he is grousing about his own physical deformities and plotting all manner of villainy including murder against his brother, the “sun of York,” King Edward IV. In the centuries since Richard first uttered his morose monologue, it has taken on a more collective meaning, one that captures all manner of social and political malaise. Sound familiar? But no; let’s not go there today. Let’s just stay in this present snowy moment.

The snow that fell overnight is just vanilla frosting on winter’s cake. Enjoy it while you can; there’s surely more to come…

I’ll be right back.

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Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives on both sides of the Chesapeake Bay. His editorials and reviews have appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine. His most recent novel, “The Tales of Bismuth; Dispatches from Palestine, 1945-1948” explores the origins of the Arab-Israeli conflict. It is available on Amazon and in local bookstores. His newest novel, “The People Game,” is scheduled for publication in February, 2026. (It’s available for pre-order now on Amazon.) His website is musingjamie.net.

I was upstairs folding laundry when I heard a knock at the front door. It doesn’t take much to make me forget about folding laundry so I headed downstairs to see who was here. It was my friend Tom, owner of our local bookstore. He had a young man with him. Tom introduced us: “Jamie! This is Jacob. He’s just back from the Peace Corps. You two should talk!” and with a cheery wave of his hand, Tom was gone.

I invited Jacob in and made us tea. He was indeed just a few days back from two years of teaching school in a South African village and, like all of us who have returned home after serving in the Peace Corps, Jacob was wondering about what comes next. I understood. I remembered returning to America and asking myself “So, now what? Where do I go from here?”  

Reentry isn’t easy. In my case, I had been away for four years: two in a small village in the remote western mountains of Tunisia, followed by two more on the Peace Corps Staff in the capital city of Tunis. When I finally returned home, America seemed to have gotten along just fine without me; it hadn’t changed all that much. But I had changed. A lot.

The French have a word for the feeling of being untethered, even lost, in unfamiliar surroundings: dépaysé. All of a sudden, I felt like a stranger in a strange land. For a returning Peace Corps Volunteer, that dilemma is compounded because now you’re back home, but home doesn’t feel like it once did. Moreover, you’re confronted with the challenge of finding your way in a world that is vastly different from the one you’ve left behind. And then there are the existential questions and expectations, some self-imposed, some societal. What comes next?

I delayed answering those questions by going to graduate school. But when that was over, all those questions were still out there, demanding answers. I tried banking, but it didn’t take. So, on the assumption that I had enjoyed international work, I moved my young family to Washington and began looking for a job there… 

I have always admired people who have a plan and stick to it. They know exactly who they are and what they want and they never deviate from their plan; they just make it happen. One of my college roommates was like that: he always knew he wanted to be a doctor, but not just any doctor. He wanted to be a surgeon; not just any surgeon, but a hand surgeon; and not just a hand surgeon, but a doctor practicing in a teaching hospital, training other doctors in the art of hand surgery. And that’s exactly what he did with his life. Now, he is retired from a successful career, and there are many fine hand surgeons today who have my former roommate to thank for their own careers.

But I’m not like that. I had to discover my path, and so I began to cross the river of my life on steppingstones— a seemingly random path of people and professional opportunities that slowly but surely led me to a time and place I did not foresee and could never have scripted. It has been, to say the least, a miraculous journey, guided by unseen hands. For example, When I first arrived in Washington more than forty-five years ago, I was dépaysé in the extreme, I set about looking for work, and one day, after several dead-ends, I went to yet another job interview in which It became quickly apparent to me (and probably to the person interviewing me!) that I would be a fish out of water in that particular organization. I left the building feeling more confused than ever and—literally!— bumped into a man I hadn’t seen in several years. He had known me from my Peace Corps days, and when he asked me what I was doing, I told him my story. He listened then casually mentioned that he had just heard about a new organization that was putting together a series of educational programs including a film for public television and a major traveling art exhibition with the goal of enhancing American understanding of, and appreciation for, Islamic cultures at a time in our history when both were sadly lacking. He gave me the name of a person to contact and off he went, quickly swallowed up in the busy sidewalk crowd. I never saw him again.

The next day, I followed up on that lead and, as they say, the rest is history. That first stone led me to the next and the next, on and on and on, until all my steppingstones eventually brought me to this time and this place. Granted, some of those stones were slippery and, yes, I stumbled once or twice, but now, looking back in wonder, I have no doubt whatsoever that those steppingstones and those unseen hands brought me safely to this pleasant shore where I am blessed beyond measure.

I tried my best to articulate all this to young Jacob. I think he understood. Before we parted, I proposed he speak with a friend of mine whom I thought might be a steppingstone for him. We shook hands and I went back upstairs to finish folding the laundry. 

The next day, Jacob texted me to say he had made contact with my friend and had scheduled a meeting with her. I read his message and smiled: he was on his way. 

I’ll be right back!

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Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives on both sides of the Chesapeake Bay. His editorials and reviews have appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine. His most recent novel, “The Tales of Bismuth; Dispatches from Palestine, 1945-1948” explores the origins of the Arab-Israeli conflict. It is available on Amazon and in local bookstores. His newest novel, “The People Game,” hits the market in February, 2026. His website is musingjamie.net.