Twice in the last couple of weeks, family matters have called me over to the Western Shore. I don’t mind that; it comes with the matrimonial territory of a big family. But what I do mind is that on both occasions, on my way back to the Eastern Shore, I found myself in massive traffic snarls emanating from the Bay Bridge. Sigh.

I like to think that I’m a reasonably patient person, but when it comes to traffic jams, I know I’m not. Whenever the traffic begins to slow, my fingers start to drum on the steering wheel. By the time the traffic begins its stop-and-go rhythm and the crawl really begins, I’m screeching like a tea kettle on the boil. I try to regain my good karma: I play license plate bingo or read bumper stickers, but in a minute or two, I’m back to composing a profane letter to Governor Hogan reminding him of his sworn responsibility to personally facilitate my commute.

Now I’m not going to use this space to debate the merits or location of a new span across the Bay. I’ll leave that work to others: the engineers, the planners, and (God save us) the politicians. What I do want to write about now are the crossings we come to that don’t go as planned. Maybe there’s an accident ahead, or a barrier in our way, or maybe it just isn’t the right time, but for one reason or another—space or time or fortune—we just can’t get across to the other side. We’ve all been caught in that snarl at one time or another.

Part of the problem lies with our expectations. We assume that the lanes ahead will always be open to us, but sometimes, they just aren’t. It’s not our fault, but someone has to take the blame—sorry about that letter, Governor Hogan. Another part of the problem is filed under “Entitlement.” We should all be entitled to a smooth commute and a timely arrival but when neither happens, we feel life has treated us unfairly. We deserve better!

It’s bad enough when the snarl is a singular event, but by definition, traffic jams are multiple happenings. Since everyone is in the same boat, the frustration grows like bad compound interest. Then the jockeying for position begins and soon enough, everyone is sucked into the negative atmosphere of an old-fashioned pressure vacuum tube and the fun really begins. Whoosh!

When it comes to traffic, I wish I were more even-keeled. I wish I had better options. Maybe a good book-on-tape would take my mind off all those idiots in the other lanes. Maybe there is a method of studying Italian that would preclude me from giving dirty looks left and right, but I fear I might just learn all those wonderful Italian curses. I wish I could just find the eye in the center of the hurricane and drive in a state of perpetual bliss, but I guess I’m made of scratchier stuff. Try as I might, I want to get across that damn bridge on my own damn terms so when I’m forced to consider the larger forces at work in the universe, I’m never in the proper lane for beneficial philosophical reflection. No; the pot boils and that’s that.

If I’ve ever glared at you, I apologize. If I’ve ever showed you a certain finger on my right hand, please forgive me. We’re all going in the same direction on this spinning orb, so let’s all calm down, give a wave, and let each other in. We’ll get across…eventually.

I’ll be right back.

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives in Chestertown, MD. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine. Two collections of his essays (“Musing Right Along” and “I’ll Be Right Back”) are available on Amazon. Jamie’s website is www.musingjamie.com.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Eventually, I gave up trying to do the math in my head and went to fetch a piece of paper. Here are my notes:

Pod 1: Solo uno ( “Only one.” Oh: I’m learning Italian in hopes of a trip there later this year, so I’m practicing.) This pod is obviously an aberration; there would usually be sette (seven) but  uno dei nipoti (one of the grandchildren) had a lacrosse tournament somewhere near Havre de Grace (that’s French), so sei (six) went to watch him and solo uno came here.

Pod 2: Absent; missed.

Pod 3: Ditto; still very raw.

Pod 4: Total of otto (eight): La nonna (the grandmother); 2 daughters; 1 husband (the other had to work); quattro grandchildren, including the newest member of the family, la bambina Cameron, making her debut!

Pod 5: Unexcused absence. 

Pod 6: Due nonni (two grandparents), le loro due figlie (their two daughters),  i loro due mariti (their two husbands) e sei nipoti (and six grandchildren). Total of dodeci (twelve)! Pod 6 in the lead!

Pod 7 (ours): Due di noi (two of us); il filgio (the son); la figlia (the daughter), suo marito (her husband), e quattro bambini (and four kids). Total of nove (nine). Second place.

Pod 8: Excused absence; on Fire Island.

Pod 9: La sorellina (the baby sister), suo marito (her husband), i loro due filgi (their two children) e due amici (and two friends). Total of sei (six).

Honorary pods: due cari amici. (Two dear friends).

Did I miss anyone? Probably, but I think that makes trentotto (38) di noi (of us). Ammazza! (Wow!)

(Did I mention that I’ve been learning numbers and pronouns this week?)

Anyway, let’s assume that a) my math is correct and b) so are the numbers and pronouns. “Why?” you ask. Because yesterday, was Cousins Beach Day. I have no idea how to say that in Italian.

When you’re part of a large family, together time is important. Especially this year, after we haven’t really seen much of each other in too many months. So create a moment: un giorno in spiaggia (a day at the beach).

Il tempo (the weather) couldn’t have been better; it felt like estate (summer) again. La birra era fredda (the beer was cold. I learned that in Lezione Uno).

Cousins—in any language—are the glue that holds large families together across time, space, and generations. They create bonds that transcend family pods and distance apart; they are the links in the chains that hold us together. Once upon a time, I saw my cousins regularly usually in the summer at Uncle Dale’s house on Conneaut Lake. I learned to water ski with them. But since then, we’ve drifted apart, scattered like chaff to the winds. Mi mancano. (I miss them.) 

Yesterday, I sat on the beach and watched the generations interact: the moms with their children; the helping husbands; the busy sisters. Easy chatting, probably about la dolce far niente—the “sweet do-nothings” that come with simple times easily shared. If there were a distant nube temporalesca (thundercloud) in the sunny summer sky, we didn’t see it yesterday. But then you never do. Che triste! (How sad!)

Torno subito! (I’ll be right back!)

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives in Chestertown. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine.

Two collections of his essays (“Musing Right Along” and “I’ll Be Right Back”) are available on Amazon. Jamie’s website is www.musingjamie.com

 

Welcome to June, the month named after Ward’s wife and Wally’s and Beaver’s mother. If you thought the sixth month in the Gregorian and Julian calendars was named for Juno, goddess of childbirth and guardian angel of women, well, think again. Trust me: June is named for June Cleaver, goddess of nostalgia!

Lots of important events take place in Mrs. Cleaver’s month: D-Day, the heroic invasion of Normandy, is memorialized on June 6. June 14 is Flag Day. Juneteenth, the oldest national celebrated commemoration of the abolishment of slavery, is celebrated on June 19, the day in 1865 when Major General Gordon Granger rode into Galveston, Texas and announced the Civil war was over and all slaves were free. That this startling announcement arrived in Texas nearly two and a half years after Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation is a painful reminder of the lingering stain of slavery on our national soul.

Fathers Day is another June celebration; this year it falls on June 20. My own father passed away many years ago and I think of him often—on Fathers Day and many other days, too. These days, I take great pride in my own son’s good fatherhood, bless his soul.

Hidden among these more significant June days are a host of other celebrations: National Flip a Coin Day (June 1); National Bubba Day (June 2); National Chocolate Ice Cream Day (June 7); Donald Duck Day and National Strawberry Rhubarb Pie (both on June 9); National Monkey Around Day (June 14th) comes just a day before National Prune Day (June 15); in an odd juxtaposition, both National Picnic Day and National Panic Day fall on June 18 this year; I could go on: National Kissing Day is June 19, National Selfie Day is June 21, National Catfish Day is June 25, but by now, you get the point. All these National Days! No wonder Congress is too busy to address that nasty, little insurrection at the Capitol six months ago!

But back to Mrs. Cleaver. The world was so much simpler back in those halcyon days. We were lulled into believing that an inquisitive and somewhat naïve boy, Theodore “Beaver” Cleaver, could actually formulate so many of life’s imponderable questions. The show, “Leave It to Beaver,” first aired in 1957 and ran for the next five-plus years. It introduced America to an entire lexicon of kid slang: “gyp” meant “to swindle,” “mess around” meant what it meant, a “beef” was a disagreement, and “flake off” or “pipe down” was how Wally told his “goofy” little brother to get lost. But perhaps the most used phrase, “Gee, Beave,” became America’s new punchline. I still use it today to imply wonder.

Among its many firsts, “Leave It To Beaver” was the first television show to display a toilet tank. Let that sink in, so to speak. And because June was such a clean freak—tidiness was one of her hallmarks—how many housewives of the day were enjoined into keeping a neat home and having dinner ready when their poor, tired husbands walked in the front door after a long, hard day at the office. Small wonder that in one episode, Beaver muses that one day he will marry a mother and live happily ever after.

So now you know the history of this new month, thirty days of good, clean fun. The last episode of “Leave It To Beaver” aired on June 20, 1963, just a few months before President Kennedy…; no, not going to go there. Let me stay with the Goddess of Nostalgia a little while longer.

I’ll be right back.

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives in Chestertown, MD. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine.
Two collections of his essays (“Musing Right Along” and “I’ll Be Right Back”) are available on Amazon. Jamie’s website is www.musingjamie.com.

At one point or another in each of our lives, we find—if we’re lucky—a place that suits our soul. It might be just a park bench, or maybe a city or town, or a house, or even a room. The latter was my good fortune because for seventeen years: I had the Pine Room all to myself.

I was a college counselor, teacher, and coach at Landon, a boys school in the suburbs of Washington. I had drawn a lucky straw and was given an apartment on the second floor of a lovely old farmhouse, one of the original buildings on the school’s seventy-acre campus. Except for an occasional meeting or event downstairs, I had the place to myself: two bedrooms, two baths, a small but sufficient upstairs kitchen, a lovely porch that overlooked playing fields from which I could survey my domain at tree-top level, and the Pine Room.

The Pine Room was my study, my library, my safehaven, my cozy spot. In summer, it was always a cool retreat; the pine ceiling, paneled walls, and plank floor took the sting out of all those hot, humid Washington days. But it was in winter that the room really came into its own. Warmed by a generous fireplace, on cold evenings the Pine Room glowed with contentment. By day, there was ample natural light, but at night, the lamplight was perfect. I could sit and read or watch tv or stare into the fire, letting my thoughts drift away like smoke up the chimney. As the saying goes, I was snug as a bug in a rug.

I was aware of, and thankful for, my good fortune, but now, looking back on those years, I understand that something else was happening. After the tumult and disappointment that comes with divorce, I was healing, starting over. School life suited me: I could walk to work with my dog. I liked my job, my students, and my faculty friends and colleagues. I was surrounded by playing fields and green space. Maybe most importantly, I had evenings to myself and I found the solitude I needed to begin again. I knew I couldn’t just turn the page and go on as if nothing had happened; I needed time to find another starting line, another place to stand.

And perhaps that was the most precious gift of the Pine Room. I took pride in its dusty clutter, its comfortable charm, its cozy grace. For the first time in many years, I felt at home. After all the strum und drang of family, career, and mid-life, I began to feel as if, in John McPhee’s luminous phrase, I had finally “come into my own country.”

There came a day when it was time to leave the farmhouse and the Pine Room. I wasn’t unhappy; I was just ready for change. Although I didn’t know exactly where the next steps would lead, I trusted the process enough to know that I needed to move on, to fly the nest. Then, in yet another turn of good fortune, I discovered a lovely little town on the Eastern Shore of Maryland and an historic house I could actually afford. And that was enough to give me the shove I needed.

Nearly a decade later, I’ve come to realize that the Pine Room was the womb that birthed me. Strangely enough, my new (old) home in Chestertown reminds me of the Pine Room: its crooked quirks and cluttered charm have become the next iteration of home for me. While I miss the Pine Room and all it offered, I don’t rue my decision to leave. When the time came, there was no alternative. I made the leap and maybe someday, I’ll understand why I landed here.

I’ll be right back.

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives in Chestertown, MD. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine. Two collections of his essays (“Musing Right Along” and “I’ll Be Right Back”) are available on Amazon. Jamie’s website is www.musingjamie.com.

I’ve come to the conclusion that celebrations are good. Now this may seem like a self-evident proposition, but I think it’s more complicated than that. The problem, as I see it, is that our celebratory radar needs to be recalculated. It’s easy enough to recognize the big events that need celebrating, but we might lead happier lives if we celebrated smaller achievements, like finding something that was lost or losing a couple of pounds. Well, maybe not the latter as that second slice of celebratory cake might well be counter-productive to the achievement itself.

I began thinking about this a few nights ago when we did, in fact, celebrate a major birthday. The celebrated one is a much loved friend who tends to hide her light under her own bushel basket, which may well be one of the many reasons she is so universally loved and admired. Whatever those reasons, eleven of us gathered to mark her birthday on a soft and pleasant spring evening. How the event came to be held in our backyard is a story in and of itself, based on truths involving a recent hip surgery and a certain home improvement project, but all that’s beside the point. What is note-worthy is that this party was a collaborative event, one that took the proverbial village in that everyone pitched in to provide all the necessary ingredients: plenty of good food and drink, as well as all the essential infrastructure of a garden party: tables and chairs, candles and flowers. OK; so there were no strolling violinists, but the happy buzz of conversations more than made up for any lack of strings. 

I have no doubt that the festive atmosphere was enhanced by the fact that we—good friends all—were together again after too many months of living separately. We were outdoors and vaccinated, so there was nary a mask in sight, perhaps proof that the world is finally on the mend. We punctuated that point when the birthday cakes (note the plural) were presented to the guest of honor to the sound of bagpipes which had not been played lo these many pandemic months. Stirring—at least I thought so, but the neighbors might have had a different opinion. By the end of the evening, everyone was in a good mood, not rowdy, just happy to have shared in the marking of a friend’s milestone.

But back to where I began: celebrations are good; we just need to find more ways to incorporate them into our daily lives. Birthdays are, at best, annual events, like Thanksgiving or Christmas or the Fourth of July. Graduations are certainly worthy of celebration, but they only come at the end of a four-year slough. In pre-Covid times, our town regularly celebrated First Fridays on a monthly basis—better, in my opinion, but not good enough. We just need to take smaller steps.

I propose some manner of daily celebration. It need not require great fanfare or party favors or even alcohol. Maybe it’s just a happy memory, or a quiet moment of gratitude shared with a loved one. We take so much for granted that sometimes we fail to recognize all the good that resides within and around us, all the little accomplishments of our daily lives. If we can figure out how to celebrate all the small steps, then maybe, just maybe, one day we’ll figure out how to celebrate the long journey of life.

I’ll be right back.

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives in Chestertown. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine.

Two collections of his essays (“Musing Right Along” and “I’ll Be Right Back”) are available on Amazon. Jamie’s website is www.musingjamie.com.

 

A friend once told me, “Whatever you do, do NOT write about golf. It’s elitist and turns people off.” He probably knew what he was talking about because back in the day, he was a hot-shot editor at a major daily newspaper. So let me be clear about what follows: THIS MUSING IS NOT ABOUT GOLF.”

That said, I need to explain a term. You probably know that most golfers like to keep score. I mean, what’s the point of swatting a little white ball around a golf course for four hours if you don’t know how many times you hit the damn thing. So you keep score on (logically) a scorecard which records the result of 18 holes of excruciating pain or, sometimes, palpable pleasure. BUT THIS IS NOT A MUSING ABOUT GOLF.

Now a ringer scorecard is a bit different. It is something I’ve used to keep a record of my best score on each hole over the course of a year. I’ve done this every year for the past ten, and my best annual score is fourteen under par, not bad except that it took me likely a hundred rounds to achieve that number. BUT THIS IS NOT ABOUT GOLF.

“So, what is this about?” you ask. It’s about keeping score in life: about tracking progress, testing limits, celebrating success, and coming to grips with failure. When I make a mark on my ringer scorecard, I can see what is at least achievable—not all the time, but, at least, every once in a while. That’s always good to know because if we don’t know what we’re capable of, we’re doomed to a life of mediocrity.

Over my years of ringer record-keeping, I’ve birdied (bested par by one shot) every hole on our course at least once. Ergo, I’m theoretically capable of playing a round in 53 shots—18 under par on a par 71 course. There are no truly exceptional moments—no holes-in-one, no albatrosses, not even an eagle—but that’s OK. Eighteen under par would likely set an unbeatable record for a single round. BUT REMEMBER; I’M NOT TALKING ABOUT GOLF.

I think knowing one’s possibilities and one’s limits is a good thing. I’d even go so far as to say that the inscription on the frontispiece of the Temple of Delphi gave good advice to all those ancient Greeks who never played a single round of golf: “Know Thyself.” Socrates took that aphorism one step further by musing (apparently Socrates was a muser, too) that we are all born with a pretty good dose of self-knowledge; the problem of life is that no one is very good at remembering what that knowledge is. My little ringer scorecard is a step in that direction, at least as a modicum of self-knowledge pertains to my golfing life. BUT THIS IS NOT A MUSING ABOUT GOLF.

Were I to have kept a ringer scorecard about other facets of my life, I wouldn’t be setting any course records. There might be a few birdies, but there would be a whole host of bogies. But here is the secret of my little ringer system: I can clearly see where the bogies lie, and therefore, I’m able to try and try again to rectify the problems. To do better.

So far this year, I have six birdies circled on my ringer scorecard, but there remains one blemish—an obstinate bogey square—around number 7. It’s the monkey on my back, but there’s still time. You see, my little ringer scorecard is more than mere self-congratulations or even a poor attempt to achieve some measure of self-understanding on my home turf. It’s simply a pretty good metaphor about tracking the rounds of my life. BUT PLEASE JUST REMEMBER: THIS IS NOT A MUSING ABOUT GOLF!

I’ll be right back.

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives in Chestertown. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine.

Two collections of his essays (“Musing Right Along” and “I’ll Be Right Back”) are available on Amazon. Jamie’s website is www.musingjamie.com.

 

 

It’s May and suddenly the world is green again. We’ve finally made the leap from winter to spring and so to celebrate, we spruced up the backyard. We pulled weeds, trimmed the ivy on the fence, cut crisp new edges to define the flower beds, planted some sweet peppers and tomatoes (for the grandkids), then spread a fresh blanket of black mulch over everything to frame the painting. 

Actually, that’s all a lie. “We” didn’t do any of this; Cheqi did. Cheqi is an artist with a machete and shovel; a master of the pitchfork and hoe. He’s a hard worker who can drive a wheelbarrow like Mario Andretti once drove a race car. He must be a magician, too, because and at the end of two long days, he made all the detritus of his labor disappear like Houdini, leaving the garden as peaceful and pristine as Eden before the fall.

Henry David Thoreau published Walden in 1854. The book is a transcendentalist’s hymn to a simple life lived in nature. One-hundred and twenty years later, Annie Dillard won the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction for Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, her narrative of a solitary year spent observing the natural world from a cabin deep in Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains. Now I’m not saying our backyard can compete with Walden Pond or Tinker Creek, but it does promote quiet thoughts about living simply in nature. Green space has a way of doing that. 

So does water. It’s not surprising that Thoreau and Dillard honed their philosophies next to a pond and a creek. There’s something about water that promotes reflection; maybe it’s as simple as the refraction of light that enables us to closely observe the true shimmer of the world. Just this morning, I rose early and sat on a dock to watch big and little birds fly—nothing unusual in that except I was looking down, not up. I was watching their flight paths reflected in mirrored surface of Little Greenwood Creek, a tributary of the Wye River. There was no wind and the tide was slack, so there I sat, staring out at a new day through twin windows of water and sky. As above, so below.  

I’ve often tried to express how fortunate I feel to live in such a beautiful place. It may sound corny, but there are moments here when I feel that I’m one with nature, as though the beauty of this world has somehow seeped into my soul. Sometimes that moment happens under a starry sky; sometimes it happens in the cathedral that is the nearby golf course I love; sometimes it hits me when I’m sitting with morning coffee on the front porch, or now, thanks to Cheqi, in the peace of our rejuvenated backyard.

Both Thoreau and Dillard immersed themselves in nature to better understand their unique individuality through introspection, self-sufficiency, and living simply. That’s a luxury few of us can afford. But maybe we don’t have to remove ourselves completely from society to find our place in the world. Maybe it’s enough to find one quiet moment in each day to be thankful for all that we have.

I’ll be right back.

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives in Chestertown. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine.

Two collections of his essays (“Musing Right Along” and “I’ll Be Right Back”) are available on Amazon. Jamie’s website is www.musingjamie.com.

 

Meet Glenn. He’s our day dog. His forever family own and operate the local wine and cheese shop so Glenn spends his days—and sometimes into the evening—with us so he doesn’t eat and drink up all the shop’s profit. It’s a win-win-win situation for everyone.

Most everyone in town knows Glenn. He’s a very friendly little guy with a tail like a metronome set to allegro. To my knowledge, Glenn has never met a soul he doesn’t like. He greets every passer-by with an enthusiastic bark or two, and if he really is excited to see you, he might leak a little “oil” on your shoe. Nothing says love like a little spillage.

But as much as I love Glenn, I want to muse a little about chiaroscuro, the artistic technique that makes strong use of the contrast between light and dark. It’s a visibly arresting technique that impacts not just a particular object in a scene, but the entire composition of a canvas, often giving a painting or a photograph focus and a sense of volume—three dimensions on a two-dimensional surface.  Leonardo da Vinci, Rembrandt, and Caravaggio were all masters of the chiaroscuro technique; so, too, were Reubens, Velásquez, Vermeer, and many others. Their use of harsh, dramatic light served to isolate the subjects of their paintings and heighten the emotional tension of their themes. Want to see what I mean? Just Google Caravaggio’s “The Deposition of Christ” or Vermeer’s “Girl with a Pearl Earring” to visually experience the full impact of the chiaroscuro technique. 

But if you really think about it, chiaroscuro is all around us, all the time; it’s an inherent part of our lives. Chiaroscuro is not simply an artist’s use of the contrast between light and dark; it represents the eternal jostling between good and evil, reason and belief, joy and grief, even life and death. It depicts all the opposing forces, the yins and yangs, that combine to create the whole cloth of our individual universes. Even a photographic portrait of a cute little dog sitting on a porch gives evidence of the twin towers of light and darkness that rule our lives. Glenn as a metaphor.

Without a good dose of chiaroscuro, the surfaces of our lives would be sadly flat. Without darkness, we can’t experience light. Without cold, we can’t appreciate heat. While we may sometimes rue the duality of life, without it, we would be nothing more than stick figures on scratch paper. We need shade and depth to be human, or even, for that matter, to be a dog. 

Anyway, so sayeth Glenn. I don’t know what got into him. He’s not usually given to such ponderous thoughts; he’s more of a ‘what’s-for-dinner?’ kind of pooch. Nevertheless, if you happen to pass by some evening and you see him sitting on the porch, lean over the fence, rub his velvet ears, and say hello. Just watch out for your shoes.

I’ll be right back.

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives in Chestertown. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine.

Two collections of his essays (“Musing Right Along” and “I’ll Be Right Back”) are available on Amazon. Jamie’s website is www.musingjamie.com.

 

I have a confession to make: I’m a saurologist. Not a real one, of course; more of an amateur saurologist, an aficionado of saurology. I can’t help myself; I just like lizards.

I’ve lost count of how many lizards I have around the house; I think the right number is 23, but it may be 24. I’m not talking about real lizards, of course; just artistic representations. They scurry across our walls and tabletops. They watch from the porch ceiling. Our door knocker is a particularly heavy lead lizard I found in an antique shop on Long Island. The clock in the guest room is a fanciful lizard; his tail is the pendulum that ticks off the seconds. (More on that later.) There are three lizards strategically hidden in the garden. There’s even one tattooed in a private place on my person and there will not be more on that later.

The question, of course, is why lizards? The honest answer is I really don’t know. Lizards fascinate me: maybe it’s their colors, or their lightning-quick movements, or their adaptability to a variety of environments, or their powers of regeneration. Cut off the tail of a lizard and he’ll grow a new one. That capability alone has helped lizards survive since the age of the dinosaurs, which, by the way, is the genesis of the term saurology—the study of lizards. You see, dinosaurs were just terrible lizards.

Now, I must make a distinction. I like small lizards, comical little creatures. I’m not sure I would fare very well if I were suddenly confronted with a Komodo dragon, one of those fearsome lizards that live in Indonesia who grow to a length of ten feet, weigh more than one-hundred fifty pounds, and ambush small mammals. They’re much too big for me. I’m more of a skink or salamander kind of guy. I like my lizards cute, not scary.

I’ve always given credence to the concept of spirit animals. Native Americans believed—still believe—that certain animals can be teachers or messengers who can have a personal relationship with an individual. I like this notion a lot; maybe lizards are my guides or teachers, better ones than Mrs. Swango, my sixth-grade teacher, who warned us about the dangers of standing with our hands in our pockets lest people think we were playing pocket pool. I’ll never forget that lesson. But I digress…

One of my stalled novels is called “Axolotl.” It was an early attempt at historical fiction and centered around the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 in what is now New Mexico. It was led by a mystical figure named Popé, a holy man who invented a method of communication by the insurrectionists who lived miles apart and spoke a variety of languages. In classical Nahautl—the dialects spoken by various pueblo Indians—an axolotl was a walking fish, an amphibian who was adept at hiding in plain sight. That inspired Popé to invent a secret language by which the various pueblos could plan their revolt. They even won—one of the few examples of a successful rebellion by native people against a colonial power, in this case the Mexican government. By the way, Popé is now of New Mexico’s two historical figures honored with a statue in the Capitol Rotunda in Washington, but again I digress. Sorry.

Back to the clock in our guest room, the one with the ticking tail. Well, it turns out that one of my brothers-in-law has a lizard phobia. He was raised In Puerto Rico and as a child, he was frightened by all the lizards that would come to visit him at night. Who knew? When he came to stay with us, we had to remove all the lizard paraphernalia in the guest room—two wall decorations, the bedside lamp, and the clock—so he could go to sleep. I thought the episode was funny; he didn’t.

So, there you have it. I’m proud of my love of lizards. In fact, my grandchildren call the ones around the house Geep’s (that’s me) “lizard friends.” They love to count all the lizards and they always come with a different number. Sometimes, I hide one, just to keep them on their toes. That’s what my spirit guide told me to do.

I’ll be right back.

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives in Chestertown. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine.

Two collections of his essays (“Musing Right Along” and “I’ll Be Right Back”) are available on Amazon. Jamie’s website is www.musingjamie.com.

We are blessed to live in a place where all the wonders of creation are so evident. For much of my life, I lived in big cities where the vertical world of apartment buildings and office skyscrapers, bright lights and constant din overwhelmed my senses. But over here, on the right-hand side of Maryland, I can engage in an ongoing conversation with the natural realm, a place where light and sky and water combine to create a pristine universe—a harmony of color, light, and sound that infuses me with a sense of peace.

Of course, it isn’t always like this. If it were, we’d probably become just jaded spectators to dazzling sunrises and sunsets, to the turn of the tide, to the subtle shift of the wind, even to the cataclysmic thunderstorms that occasionally seem to swoop in out of nowhere. We have our fair share of grey, shapeless winter days and mind-numbing summer evenings plagued by heat and humidity, but they’re the exception, not the rule. No; the rule here is expansive water views, undulating landscapes, gentle evenings, and starlit nights.

There’s nothing wrong with urban living, but small town life has a charm all its own. For better or worse, we know each other; not much remains secret for very long. We’re exposed here, as much to each other as to Mother Nature. If you’re seeking anonymity, this isn’t the place for you, but if you want to find connection, it’s right here, all around you, all the time.

Nearly a decade in, I still find plenty that’s new and fresh. I explore a new road and suddenly there’s a vista I haven’t seen before. A newcomer moves in down the street and suddenly I have a new friend. A season changes and suddenly the world looks different all over again. You can’t escape the daily dialog with all the actors that are in the play with you, but should you need to find a little solitude, it’s just around the corner.

I realize I’m gilding the lily. Life can be as hard here as in the biggest metropolis. There is still too much poverty, discrimination, injustice, and alienation. Change comes slowly here; old attitudes and bad habits can die a slow death in a small town. But maybe because we are called to interact with each other on a daily basis, we’re challenged to cope and change, to put away small grudges, and to understand each other better. In a bigger, busier place, we can hide ourselves away, but here all our faults and foibles are laid bare and we can hear a higher calling. You know the one I mean: the one asking us to mend, to improve, and to care for each other in myriad ways.

Am I overly romantic? Naïve? A Pollyanna? Very possibly all three. But I’ve always believed that I was called here for a reason and that reason may very well be that I needed to find the connections that are available here. So, I’ll sit in the quiet of a new day. I’ll help a friend or even a stranger. And in the evening, I’ll look for the fire in the sky.

I’ll be right back.

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives in Chestertown. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine. Two collections of his essays (“Musing Right Along” and “I’ll Be Right Back”) are available on Amazon. Jamie’s website is www.musingjamie.com.