Will I Ever See Snow Again?

    Before you jump to conclusions, know that the photo above is an old one, not current, although we did get a skiff of snow overnight.

    Way back in February of 1969, I was in my last year of university in Indiana, where I grew up.  Months earlier, I had applied to join the Peace Corp, and I had just been accepted for a two year stint in the Philippines.  My twenty-one year old self was full of curiosity and questions about what my future would hold, knowing that the tropical islands of the Philippines would probably be in it.

    On that February morning it had snowed overnight, and when my class was over I was walking through the snow back to my MG to drive home.  As I walked, I looked down at the snow that covered the campus and was full of nostalgia and doubt, realizing I was leaving my home to live on the other side of the world.   I wondered, “Will I ever see snow again?”

    Potentially missing snow, seemed like a strange thought, knowing of all of the thousands of other and more meaningful things in my life that I would be leaving behind, but that was what my 21 year old brain was wondering about.

    One can never predict where their life might lead, and my best guess at the time was way off.  After my two and a half months of Peace Corp Training in Hawaii, I realized, that my Tagalog language skills were not going to be good enough for me to work in the Philippines, plus the job I was being trained for:  Running seminars for teachers, didn’t really appeal to me; I initially thought I would be teaching kids, and finally, the Vietnam War was continually escalating, and I wanted to get back to work with others of my generation to work toward stopping the slaughter, so I quit the Peace Corp and headed back to Indiana.

    Looking back, I guess I was wasting my time worrying about whether I would ever see snow again, because I ended up immigrating to Canada, where I have seen more than enough of the white stuff in my life.

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca