The Harvard Crimson's Summer Postcards

[Part 2 of 2, continued from earlier post]

Apologies to The Stable Boy, but I was beginning to ache in muscles I hadn’t even known existed. My safari-mates failed to offer any distraction. They were trendy British girls who had already cocooned themselves behind their iPods and aviator sunglasses. They were probably playing their special Desert Mix.

Focus on the scenery, I told myself. The ground was hard and sandy, broken up by the occasional spiky bush. Once in a while we plodded past a mangy goat or a few unfluffy sheep. Against the gray horizon, I could make out the distant, graceful arc of a power line.

So much for the “unspoiled desert” they had advertised. I felt like I was caravanning across someone’s backyard.

My nameless camel was the only other thing in my field of vision. I watched two joints in his back rise and fall in circular motion as he moved his legs. I admired the dinosaur-like curve of his neck, the heart-shaped tuft of hair on his nape. He appeared to have an anal fixation: every time he got close to the camel in front of us he would bend his head and start licking his companion’s tail. It took me a while to realize that this might not be okay; once the biting stopped both of the camels calmed down.

This excitement got me through the first hour. Hours remaining: 35.

Finally, it hit me. This was it: the first, great test of my General Education. I had been schooled in seven ways of knowing. I had absorbed three-quarters of a liberal arts education. And what was it all for, if not to give me the Inner Resources to endure two days on top of a camel?

I would not mentally replay the episodes of The OC I had watched in high school. I would not wallow in inner drama. I was the proud owner of a General Education. I could do better than that.

So I gave it my best shot. I pondered the economics of camel safaris, but could conjure no curves of supply or demand. I looked at my camel, and at the rocks on the ground, and wondered if I would have been better off if I had taken anatomy or geology instead of “Molecules of Life.” I thought about replaying the French Revolution.

All I came back to was a scrap of poetry, picked up in no class. It was Theodore Roethke: “She moved in circles and those circles moved.”

This sounded lovely. But the more I thought about it, the more it reminded me of the camel’s joints and the slow jolts and how my whole body was rolling back and forth, accumulating pain.

I wondered what would have happened if they had let the Gen Ed committee sojourn in the desert. With great effort, I crossed my legs in front of me. The camel didn’t seem to notice. This position was uncomfortable, but in a different way. I took a drink of water. I adjusted my hat. Zen, I thought, staring at the tail of the camel in front of me.  I will think….of absolutely….nothing.

“Two more hours,” one of the guides announced, “then lunch.”  We lapsed again into silence. —Lois E. Beckett