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.

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!

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.