Atop the Camel's Hump
Originally written for Itzkowitz's Writing with Style class, Atop the Camel's Hump won first place in the Denise Gess Literary Awards for creative nonfiction.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Island is a word which calls to mind a hundred different pictures. Common images, ones we all share through vacations, photographs, or what we see on television: azure waves lapping at pristine white beaches. Rich palm fronds sighing in the humid breeze. Gulls and other seabirds that laugh, bicker, and shriek when the winds lift their wings to spiraling heights. Islands are a place of peace, a sanctum of serenity.
Well, not my island.
My island is ugly. Bare and boring and bleak. It rises from the earth, fifteen feet high and dimpled like a camel’s hump, ringed by acres and acres of corn; an ocean of sweet Indian gold. Its muddy slopes are sharp and steep, treacherous in the rain. There is no soft carpet of grass adorning my island, no bed of furry moss. Instead jagged thorns tear at flesh and snare on clothes. The island’s only thriving flora, an ancient white oak, watches the world and casts a long black shadow.
It is a truly unwelcoming place, and not very lovely to behold.
Yet I love it.
The Camel’s Hump I called it, upon staking my claim, truly believing that I was the one person in the world to acknowledge this little plot of land, this poor wretched isle.
In the summer, when the country steams and sweats, the corn circling the Camel’s Hump grows tall enough to scratch the sky. Miles of corn, all green and gold in the haze of morning, the stalks glittering like diamonds under a layer of dew. Mice feast on kernels until they are too fat to flee the foxes, and foxes feast on mice until they are nearly too fat to flee the farmer. (I think he lets them get away.)
There are several signs which read “No Trespassing” along the road that divides the farm and the adjacent neighborhood, but for the moment I am blissfully illiterate. I’m only visiting, after all. The farmer will not fault one girl just for exploring. Corn swallows me like a gaping yellow maw. I run through it eagerly, losing myself amongst the stalks, the blonde hairs of the corn tangling with the brown of my own. There is no north or south, no east or west. There is only corn, yellow and bright, raging against a blue sky.
The earth trembles.
From somewhere out of sight comes a roar, followed by a great mechanical groan. The sound of a harvester coughing to life. For a brief moment I see myself racing through rows and rows of corn, desperate to find the road, but I am lost in the maze and the farmer’s tractor hunts me down first. My bones are ground to dust, my blood and organs and sinew squeezed out of me like a tube of toothpaste as the farmer drives on, oblivious to the fact that his bountiful summer harvest is now two ears richer... and two eyes richer, and ten toes richer, and a nose richer, too.
But then I see the island. The Camel’s Hump.
I can just make out the very precipice; the rest is obscured by towering stalks. The old oak stands sure and still, my lighthouse in the yellow sea. Its bark is ash-gray and splintered, its leaves fiercely green. I make that my target. Like a lemur, I throw myself up the island’s steep banks, clinging to roots and rocks alike while the tractor wheezes on by, flattening the yellow sea in its wake. Thank God I’m not down there.
The view is magnificent.
I am the tallest girl on the planet—emerald meadows and farms and dusty roads all unfold before me. I am in the very heart of the Garden State. I wait for the farmer to finish reaping his field, with only the splintered old oak for company. Its roots, as thick around as one of my thighs, erupt from the dirt as though the tree was trying to break free of the earth and walk the world like some fabled ent or nymph. Several ants travel up and down its bark, which is pocked and scarred by time’s cruel passing. The lowest hanging branches are still too high for a girl to climb, but the birds and beasts make good use of them. A Red-tailed hawk, sharp of eye and sharper of talon, scrutinizes me from the safety of his perch. His tongue flutters from his beak like a trembling pink worm.
“It’s hot today,” I agree, and the hawk wheels away into the wild blue yonder. I wonder, when the black canvas of night descends, will he return to the oak? Or will some slow-witted owl claim the tree in his absence?
Around me, the earth rumbles.
Puffy white clouds fashion the shapes of fantastic creatures, dragons and dwarves and dinosaurs.
I realize how much I like this place. Despite the rocky soil and vicious brambles (and my near brush with death) I am oddly at peace, sheltered by the lonely old oak. No one knows I am here. Not the farmer or the drivers in their cars rolling past on the nearby road. Only the Red-tailed hawk—and who would he tell?
When the tractor sputters to a stop, spewing oily black smoke from a rusty exhaust pipe, I bid farewell to my island, carefully slide down to solid ground, and cross the flattened field of corn. Crushed vegetation cushions my feet like a plush carpet. I feel exposed and naked—the wonder of the yellow sea trampled to a bitter green pulp. There’s a shout behind me, likely the farmer, and I’m spurred to a sprint.
Over the field, across the road, into my Ford.
The Camel’s Hump looks even bigger when not flanked by so much corn, yet somehow more vulnerable. A secret revealed.
It is winter before I visit again.
Cruel cold winds sweep across the land. Branches, weakened by frost, splinter and snap, loud as a bullwhip in the eerie stillness of December. The animals have all gone: birds to warmer southern states, rabbits to their warrens. Humans venture into the world only once properly shrouded against the elements. Snow powders the earth.
The oak looms in silent vigil, its naked arms bared towards the blue-gray sky. The corn is a summer dream, but the Camel’s Hump remains.
Before I cross the snowy field I wonder how many winters the old white oak has seen. Ten? Twenty? Fifty? Has it ever seen a winter free of people? A winter before Hartford Road trundled along its left or Centerton Road along its right? A winter before the homes and farms and businesses? A winter before time? What ancient wonders, I meditate. What stories it could tell had the little seedling sprouted a mouth instead of roots.
I study the island from across the road. It looks as though an enormous camel fell asleep in the middle of a snowstorm.
Every season has its scents, I reflect, trampling across the unbroken snow. Spring smells like wet earth, summer like salty surf. Autumn has pumpkins and spices and rotten leaves. But winter freezes in your nostrils until snot dribbles down your chin.
The old oak looks bigger somehow. Only a handful of stubborn red leaves still cling to its branches. A few are tugged free in the frigid winter gusts.
Carefully, I make my ascent, pulling myself upward with one of the oak’s massive ruptured roots.
There are a few animal droppings here, but otherwise the Camel’s Hump has been left undisturbed. White snow, frozen earth. The gunmetal superstructure of the Cornfield Cruiser, an old US Air Force Space Command site turned Defense System, is visible from atop the island. The building belches steam, warm steam, and I am suddenly aware of just how cold I am. My skin is raw and cold and red, my lips cracked like a desert in a drought.
I have to do this quickly.
There is a Swiss Army knife in my pocket, a relic of the days when my brother and I were children. Where once the blade had flashed polished steel, it now glinted dully, pathetically, the victim of rust and mud and so many gutted fish. But it would serve my purposes.
I am not normally one for defacing nature, not with blade nor spray-paint nor fire, but this oak struck something in me. I wanted this tree to be mine. The sharpest edge of the Swiss Army Knife hacked through the bark with all the grace of a poacher chopping his way through the rainforest. Small slivers of wood peeled away under the blade.
In minutes I was done. The ground was peppered with wooden flakes. On one of the white oak’s roots I carved my name: CASEY 2008. The letters were thin and shallow on the root’s thick girth, poised like an anaconda with a tiny tattoo.
As I made the short walk back to my car, I wondered who would come along after me. Two lovers, perhaps, drawn by the solitude. Children who dream of monsters and adventures. Who would see my name? Would someone add their own? And in fifty years, when the world is all sterile and steel, will the white oak with my name still live?
I have not stood at the crown of the Camel’s Hump in many months, though I drive past it often enough. Summer is always the best time, when the great gold waves of corn shimmer in the warm sweet air and the insects buzz lazily from leaf to leaf. Sometimes I’ll sit and just watch, though nothing ever happens. Nothing ever changes. I suppose that is what I like best about the Camel’s Hump: for so much is altered in days and weeks and years. Children are born and men die. People learn and love and suffer. War explodes across the sea, and the last of some endangered beast sighs her final breath. The Earth warps and changes and my oak is there to see it all, a testament to time.
So many will hurry by without a second glance. Who could be bothered to marvel at a gnarled old tree and an ugly hill plagued by thorns? Not many, truly. An island in the Bahamas would better serve them. But someday, someone will see the world as I did, from atop the Camel’s Hump—and I only hope a name is left to keep mine company.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Island is a word which calls to mind a hundred different pictures. Common images, ones we all share through vacations, photographs, or what we see on television: azure waves lapping at pristine white beaches. Rich palm fronds sighing in the humid breeze. Gulls and other seabirds that laugh, bicker, and shriek when the winds lift their wings to spiraling heights. Islands are a place of peace, a sanctum of serenity.
Well, not my island.
My island is ugly. Bare and boring and bleak. It rises from the earth, fifteen feet high and dimpled like a camel’s hump, ringed by acres and acres of corn; an ocean of sweet Indian gold. Its muddy slopes are sharp and steep, treacherous in the rain. There is no soft carpet of grass adorning my island, no bed of furry moss. Instead jagged thorns tear at flesh and snare on clothes. The island’s only thriving flora, an ancient white oak, watches the world and casts a long black shadow.
It is a truly unwelcoming place, and not very lovely to behold.
Yet I love it.
The Camel’s Hump I called it, upon staking my claim, truly believing that I was the one person in the world to acknowledge this little plot of land, this poor wretched isle.
In the summer, when the country steams and sweats, the corn circling the Camel’s Hump grows tall enough to scratch the sky. Miles of corn, all green and gold in the haze of morning, the stalks glittering like diamonds under a layer of dew. Mice feast on kernels until they are too fat to flee the foxes, and foxes feast on mice until they are nearly too fat to flee the farmer. (I think he lets them get away.)
There are several signs which read “No Trespassing” along the road that divides the farm and the adjacent neighborhood, but for the moment I am blissfully illiterate. I’m only visiting, after all. The farmer will not fault one girl just for exploring. Corn swallows me like a gaping yellow maw. I run through it eagerly, losing myself amongst the stalks, the blonde hairs of the corn tangling with the brown of my own. There is no north or south, no east or west. There is only corn, yellow and bright, raging against a blue sky.
The earth trembles.
From somewhere out of sight comes a roar, followed by a great mechanical groan. The sound of a harvester coughing to life. For a brief moment I see myself racing through rows and rows of corn, desperate to find the road, but I am lost in the maze and the farmer’s tractor hunts me down first. My bones are ground to dust, my blood and organs and sinew squeezed out of me like a tube of toothpaste as the farmer drives on, oblivious to the fact that his bountiful summer harvest is now two ears richer... and two eyes richer, and ten toes richer, and a nose richer, too.
But then I see the island. The Camel’s Hump.
I can just make out the very precipice; the rest is obscured by towering stalks. The old oak stands sure and still, my lighthouse in the yellow sea. Its bark is ash-gray and splintered, its leaves fiercely green. I make that my target. Like a lemur, I throw myself up the island’s steep banks, clinging to roots and rocks alike while the tractor wheezes on by, flattening the yellow sea in its wake. Thank God I’m not down there.
The view is magnificent.
I am the tallest girl on the planet—emerald meadows and farms and dusty roads all unfold before me. I am in the very heart of the Garden State. I wait for the farmer to finish reaping his field, with only the splintered old oak for company. Its roots, as thick around as one of my thighs, erupt from the dirt as though the tree was trying to break free of the earth and walk the world like some fabled ent or nymph. Several ants travel up and down its bark, which is pocked and scarred by time’s cruel passing. The lowest hanging branches are still too high for a girl to climb, but the birds and beasts make good use of them. A Red-tailed hawk, sharp of eye and sharper of talon, scrutinizes me from the safety of his perch. His tongue flutters from his beak like a trembling pink worm.
“It’s hot today,” I agree, and the hawk wheels away into the wild blue yonder. I wonder, when the black canvas of night descends, will he return to the oak? Or will some slow-witted owl claim the tree in his absence?
Around me, the earth rumbles.
Puffy white clouds fashion the shapes of fantastic creatures, dragons and dwarves and dinosaurs.
I realize how much I like this place. Despite the rocky soil and vicious brambles (and my near brush with death) I am oddly at peace, sheltered by the lonely old oak. No one knows I am here. Not the farmer or the drivers in their cars rolling past on the nearby road. Only the Red-tailed hawk—and who would he tell?
When the tractor sputters to a stop, spewing oily black smoke from a rusty exhaust pipe, I bid farewell to my island, carefully slide down to solid ground, and cross the flattened field of corn. Crushed vegetation cushions my feet like a plush carpet. I feel exposed and naked—the wonder of the yellow sea trampled to a bitter green pulp. There’s a shout behind me, likely the farmer, and I’m spurred to a sprint.
Over the field, across the road, into my Ford.
The Camel’s Hump looks even bigger when not flanked by so much corn, yet somehow more vulnerable. A secret revealed.
It is winter before I visit again.
Cruel cold winds sweep across the land. Branches, weakened by frost, splinter and snap, loud as a bullwhip in the eerie stillness of December. The animals have all gone: birds to warmer southern states, rabbits to their warrens. Humans venture into the world only once properly shrouded against the elements. Snow powders the earth.
The oak looms in silent vigil, its naked arms bared towards the blue-gray sky. The corn is a summer dream, but the Camel’s Hump remains.
Before I cross the snowy field I wonder how many winters the old white oak has seen. Ten? Twenty? Fifty? Has it ever seen a winter free of people? A winter before Hartford Road trundled along its left or Centerton Road along its right? A winter before the homes and farms and businesses? A winter before time? What ancient wonders, I meditate. What stories it could tell had the little seedling sprouted a mouth instead of roots.
I study the island from across the road. It looks as though an enormous camel fell asleep in the middle of a snowstorm.
Every season has its scents, I reflect, trampling across the unbroken snow. Spring smells like wet earth, summer like salty surf. Autumn has pumpkins and spices and rotten leaves. But winter freezes in your nostrils until snot dribbles down your chin.
The old oak looks bigger somehow. Only a handful of stubborn red leaves still cling to its branches. A few are tugged free in the frigid winter gusts.
Carefully, I make my ascent, pulling myself upward with one of the oak’s massive ruptured roots.
There are a few animal droppings here, but otherwise the Camel’s Hump has been left undisturbed. White snow, frozen earth. The gunmetal superstructure of the Cornfield Cruiser, an old US Air Force Space Command site turned Defense System, is visible from atop the island. The building belches steam, warm steam, and I am suddenly aware of just how cold I am. My skin is raw and cold and red, my lips cracked like a desert in a drought.
I have to do this quickly.
There is a Swiss Army knife in my pocket, a relic of the days when my brother and I were children. Where once the blade had flashed polished steel, it now glinted dully, pathetically, the victim of rust and mud and so many gutted fish. But it would serve my purposes.
I am not normally one for defacing nature, not with blade nor spray-paint nor fire, but this oak struck something in me. I wanted this tree to be mine. The sharpest edge of the Swiss Army Knife hacked through the bark with all the grace of a poacher chopping his way through the rainforest. Small slivers of wood peeled away under the blade.
In minutes I was done. The ground was peppered with wooden flakes. On one of the white oak’s roots I carved my name: CASEY 2008. The letters were thin and shallow on the root’s thick girth, poised like an anaconda with a tiny tattoo.
As I made the short walk back to my car, I wondered who would come along after me. Two lovers, perhaps, drawn by the solitude. Children who dream of monsters and adventures. Who would see my name? Would someone add their own? And in fifty years, when the world is all sterile and steel, will the white oak with my name still live?
I have not stood at the crown of the Camel’s Hump in many months, though I drive past it often enough. Summer is always the best time, when the great gold waves of corn shimmer in the warm sweet air and the insects buzz lazily from leaf to leaf. Sometimes I’ll sit and just watch, though nothing ever happens. Nothing ever changes. I suppose that is what I like best about the Camel’s Hump: for so much is altered in days and weeks and years. Children are born and men die. People learn and love and suffer. War explodes across the sea, and the last of some endangered beast sighs her final breath. The Earth warps and changes and my oak is there to see it all, a testament to time.
So many will hurry by without a second glance. Who could be bothered to marvel at a gnarled old tree and an ugly hill plagued by thorns? Not many, truly. An island in the Bahamas would better serve them. But someday, someone will see the world as I did, from atop the Camel’s Hump—and I only hope a name is left to keep mine company.