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Snow Camel Diaries

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What do the retirees of Phoenix and the camels of Egypt have in common?

They both got a little tired of living up north. Scientists have discovered camel bones much closer to the North Pole than ever before – about 750 miles nearer than the previous northernmost discovery in Canada’s Yukon. These latest fragments were found on Ellesmere Island. Pretty far north.

Depiction of the High Arctic camel on Ellesmere Island 3.5 million years ago. (Julius Csotonyi)
Depiction of the High Arctic camel on Ellesmere Island 3.5 million years ago. (Julius Csotonyi)

Although we associate camels with the hot, sandy desert, they originated in North America 45 million years ago. Camels were about 30% larger when they roamed the forests of a milder Arctic. Back then, the top of the world was not the frozen wasteland it is today, but it was still plenty cold and also quite dark for half the year. Wide feet and big eyes helped camels navigate the snowy terrain, but there was no adaptation that could help them resolve their personal quarrels about where to live.

Don’t believe me? Alongside the bone fragments, researchers found a petrified tablet bearing thousands of scratches that turned out to be all that remains of a snow camel language.

Monday, September 2, 3 million B.C.,
Joe talked again about following the sun when it starts to go away. Stupid idea! But of course I didn’t tell him that – he’s so sensitive. The sun is a decoration, but he thinks getting closer to it will bring us more light and heat. Like that would feel better? I don’t think so. We’ve always lived here. Why would we want to go somewhere else? At least now I know when I’m going to be uncomfortable, and why. Out there … who knows?

Saturday, September 21, 3 million B.C.
He had a dream. Something about a place without trees. Nothing green. All sand. But it was warm, he said. The sun was big, and high in the sky and powerful and hot. I said, “That sounds like no place for camels.”
“Not yet,” he said.

Wednesday, October 2, 3 million B.C.,
He’s getting ready to go. “What should I pack?” he asks. “Joe, you’re a camel” I say. You carry water on your back. You’ve got what you need – except a good reason.” He says he’s cold and he can feel the light starting to change. And there’s that sun and sand dream. Now he says there are small upright-standing robe-wearing animals in the dream. They scurry around making strange noises and they build pointed mountains. Surreal. Sorry, this does not sound like home to me.

Friday, November 22, 3 million B.C.,
Joe left yesterday. Said the growing dark and the great hot sand dream called him and he could not stay. He asked me to come but didn’t beg. He said someday this place will be cold all the time – a barren, treeless, sheet of ice. Really? I think he’s trying to make his imaginary dusty landscape sound better. But this is the only spot we’ve ever lived. Our memories are here – these woods tell the story of all the camels that have ever been. There’s nothing for us over the horizon, I said, as far as I know. But he insists – someday they will never even know we were here. They will not be able to imagine a camel with a leafy tree in the background and we will forever be associated with sun and sand and heat. I think I get the message. He’s delusional.

But of course he wasn’t delusional. Just far-sighted.

What’s your most traumatic change of address?

47 thoughts on “Snow Camel Diaries”

  1. Rise and Shine Baboons!

    My temporary change of address has not been traumatic. In fact the change is quite pleasant if cool. Right now it is 43 degrees (only 8 degrees warmer than the Twin Cities–we paid ALL THIS MONEY FOR 8 DEGREES?). However, Savannah is as charming and lovely as ever. And there is no snow, as well as fresh seafood. The locals are preparing for their big ST. Patrick’s Day celebration. Yesterday at noon they had their “turn the fountains green” Irish rite in which all the water in the fountains was dyed green. I was expecting the water to be bright green, but in reality it is just a minty green.

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    1. st patricks celebration starts a week early? sounds dangerous. just hang on to those blades of grass tight so you dont go fallin off the earth.

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  2. Good morning, baboons!

    I lived the first 18 years of my life in the same small town: Ames, Iowa. I liked it there. The day I graduated from high school our family moved to Wayzata, where I didn’t know a soul. Most of the year i spent at college, which was Grinnell, and once again I didn’t know a soul there. I moved back and forth between Wayzata and Grinnell for four years, which made it hard to make friends in Wayzata. It was quite a change from Ames, where it felt like everyone knew everyone.

    Tomorrow is the Blevins Book Club meeting at 2168 Juliet Ave. I hope so see many of you!

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    2. I’ll dovetail your most traumatic change of address, Steve. I was 16 when our lives were uprooted, a junior in high school, and terribly insecure. My only security, in fact, had come through going steady with the same boy for nearly 3 years, so being torn away from him as well as all my childhood friends and everything familiar was brutal. I’ve thought that this level of disruption is worse for most teenagers than a parent’s divorce. Perhaps at a younger age there would’ve been more opportunity to adapt and form friendships, but between my lack of self-esteem and only two years left of school, the deck was stacked against me. I only went back to Ames once for my 20th class reunion. It’s always struck me as quite sad that 16 years of childhood could simply vanish as they did, setting my life up to feel like I had no roots ever again.

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    3. Alas, I cannot make it this time ’round. In order to make the rest of the familial calendar work for tomorrow, I had to give up BBC. Pooh. I’ll drink some wine on my own, talk about random things, and maybe discuss a book with myself. It won’t be as much fun, though, unless I can somehow get myself laughing so hard there are tears in my eyes…

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  3. My hardest move was three years ago from my parents to my apartment, which Dale helped with indirectly by playing songs for me on Heartland, and I am forever grateful to him for that. Now I work alongside him at KFAI on Fridays, so thanks for always being there for me.

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    1. welcome back aaron, i was wondering if you ever had a chance to follow the blog. i remember your post about the move back when dale was still on the air. with our live blog form 6-9 every morning. i also remember the comment you made about your spot in the may day parade. i hear there are problems with the parade these days. i hope they get it straightened out. good to hear form you. glad to know you are still up and about. i hope the new computer is working bwell for you. it looked like a better deal than the old one you used. i will be think of you on fridays on the morning blend (or do you help with the news end of his business rather than the broadcast?) stick you head in more often.

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    2. I frequently listen to KFAI over the internet and I have heard you on Fridays doing announcements, Aaron. Also, I have heard you doing an announcement of a special show you are doing on KFAI. Could you tell us about the show you will be doing?

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    3. Aaron engineers Democracy Now from 8 to 9 am and makes the transition to Lydia Howell’s “Catalyst” program at 9. I must say he does it with a style and sense of humor that is unique in all broadcasting. It’s my favorite 40 seconds of regular programming on KFAI!

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      1. Yes, I agree with you, Dale. Aaron has a lot of style and humor. I like his comical comment, “you might even learn something”, about the special show he will be doing.
        If Aaron doesn’t get a chance to tell us about the show he is going to do, could you tell us about it, Dale.

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      3. I just heard an announcement from Aaron about the show he is doing. It will be a Wave Project Show tomorrow from 10 to 11 am on KFAI.

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  4. Good morning, baboons. It feels like the spring thaw has set in! Woo-hoo!

    The most traumatic change of address for me was, hands down, my move to Cheyenne, Wyoming. Not only was I newlywed, and didn’t know a soul other than wasband within 4,800 miles, but we moved into a furnished, dark basement apartment with tiny windows and cheap, plastic laminate furniture.

    It didn’t help that there was no ocean or even big lake or river nearby. Add to that all those crazy American measurements of everything from temperature, to distance, and weight, I was totally lost. The vast open spaces of the prairie made me feel so small, and terribly vulnerable. Coming from such a small, lush, and crowded place as Denmark, I wasn’t prepared for the shock this move would be to my system.

    In time I came to love those vast open spaces, but there’s no doubt in my mind that those first two and one-half years spent in Wyoming changed me.

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    1. that had to be tramatic. plastic laminate furniture? is there any other kind for your fist home away from home? i remember the ugly furnature i got form the veterans thrift store back in my hippy house on portland and lake n my first move out on my own. dining room table and chairs form king arthur, couch with all those great tweedy nubs, coffee tables and end tables it was ok to leave your cigarettes on and burn those little stripes in when you forgot it there. a whole house of furnature for 127 dollars and then the music room with 8000 dollars worth of turntables and speakers. i talked the roomies into doing a sound test on the stereo receivers because my unit was smaller as far as amps of power to blast those giant speakers but how often do you listen to the music that loud (you dont want to know) and by golly i showed them that my little 35 watt fischer tube amp was a better deal than their 100 watt transistorized decible crankers. good news i won the arguement , bad news i didnt have a stereo to listen to. everyone else had theirs in ther room m. mine was the house stereo playing emerson lake and palmer , yes, fleetwood mac and wishbone ash all day and all night, all i wanted to do was curl up with some miles davis and david bromberg and listen to my idea of cool tunes. that was my first lesson in living in other than family disfunctional relationships. it served me well and taught me to think about big picture stuff when considering living arangements. i always remember that right after i realize i went and did it again. and again , and again. who said age gives you wisdom. i think it teaches you to step around the land mines and carry a fire extinguisher.hen there was the summer in a hotel in milwaukee where the place was a haven for the mafia, or the summer in that good old vw van cruising the west. ahhh

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-KPGh3wysw

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  5. Good morning. I think that all of the moves I have made were traumatic. I guess I would prefer to not do any moving. Hopefully our move to South Minneapolis this fall will be our last one. I’ve lived for more years in Clarks Grove than in any other place which will make it a little hard to leave here. I don’t remember a lot of details about moving to Jackson, Michigan when I was 5 years old. I do remember that I had some problems adjusting to a new school. That might have been the most traumatic move for me.

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  6. OT – Spotted this in this morning’s Pioneer Press Bulletin Board:
    Lynda Lou in St. Paul: “For many years, I started my mornings listening to MPR’s ‘The Morning Show,’ with Jim Ed Poole [the late, great Tom Keith] and Dale Connelly.

    “One day, a listener requested a song by Van Morrison. Their response was that they couldn’t find anything in their music library by him, so they would play something by Van Cliburn instead.

    “I still miss that show, and their quirky sense of humor.”

    Is Lynda Lou our Linda, I wonder?

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  7. Morning all. I had many many moves when I was a kid. The longest time I spent in any house during my childhood was 4 1/2 years in Webster Groves. It was during that time that my dad’s “ship came in” and in 9th grade (last year of junior high back then), my folks bought a house in the fru-fru part of town. We were set to move in in March and my folks decided that rather than drive me back to Webster for school from March to June, it would be better to make me move schools at the semester in January… driving me from Webster to Ladue from January to March. It was dreadful. Just dreadful. Even after all these years, thinking about it can make me tear up a bit. Kind of a defining moment in my life — this is why I’ve worked so hard to hang onto my big old house and keep Teenager in the same place, with no changing of schools mid-year.

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    1. That does sound like a rough one.
      We pulled Joel out for a move in March when he was in 2nd grade, and decided to home school for the rest of the year. He’d already started at a new school at beginning of that year, and his teacher helped us with materials, etc. So he was a new kid again first day of third grade, which was hard enough. Luckily, at both beginnings, some kid befriended him on the first day.

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  8. My most traumatic move was leaving Winnipeg after 6 years and relocating to southern Indiana. I moved to Winnipeg in 1980, and hadn’t lived in the US during the Reagan administration. Not only was it terribly hot and humid in Indiana, but the culture was so different from my experiences in Fargo and Winnipeg, and the whole political climate had changed so much.. I remember pulling into the parking lot of our apartment building for the first time and seeing one of the other residents walking around with a pair of pistols in a gun belt, sort of like what you would see in a Western film. I found out later he had been to the firing range for target practice, and he turned out to be a fairly friendly neighbor, but after peaceful Canada, it was such a shock to see someone walking around with a gun.

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  10. My most traumatic move was when I was 12. I was an anxious, shy, near-sighted bookworm. My family moved from Owatonna to Faribault when I was just entering junior high school. Mom dropped me off at the front door and I entered a completely unfamiliar place. I didn’t know anyone there and had never even been inside the imposing brown brick building. I had no idea where I was supposed to go. It turned out that “Room 13” was actually down in the basement, near the boys’ locker room. I soon found out that !horrors! the boys peed on the radiators outside my homeroom in an act of defiance. The stench was awful. It took months before I met a friend and found my way around the huge building.

    Lately though, I’d have to say that my move to Waterville in 1999 was traumatic in a different way. I’ve lost a lot of time and money because of living here and now I feel stuck in a town that I have to drive away from any time I want to do anything. I’ll stop whining now. I hope to have my house on the market this spring. It would be so great to move to an apartment in Northfield.

    I’ve been trying to keep up with the blog but I can’t post every day anymore due to work. I read everything when I can and post whenever I have time. Today’s a great day for tackling taxes!

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  11. Afternoon—
    It’s been a lazy day of looking at our ice coated yard and driveway. Thinking I’ll go out with the loader and try to scrap a layer off… and I’m sure I’ll be sanding later. Raining pretty good now.

    Moving. I’m fortunate, I guess, that I’ve never really moved. Mom and Dad built a new house when I was 4 so I don’t remember much about the old house. We lived in the machine shed 50′ to the South while they tore the old house down and rebuilt in the same place. And then my bedroom was in the basement SW corner. After getting married I moved up to the main floor master bedroom, SW corner. So I’ve moved vertically 8′.

    New entry at the end of yesterday. Let’s welcome Jay Peterson and Mr. Pointer!

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  12. My most traumatic move was the one that didn’t happen. I was living in North Minneapolis, working in St. Paul, and traveling all over the city doing freelance theater on the side. I had applied and been accepted to graduate school to pursue my MFA in theater. Graduate school was in Normal, IL – a nice enough town and I liked the professors I talked to at the university. The gal they paired me up with when I visited knew that one of her roommates was graduating, so I could probably slide into a spot with her gang – it was cheap and they would allow me to keep my dog (both huge on the list for “must haves”). It was a double-wide trailer – okay, I can live with that. I would be the only non-smoker – less good. And, even with the cheap rent, my graduate stipend was only going to leave me a couple hundred each month to buy food and take care of other bills. Food alone would wipe me out. Yikes. I woke up one night, in the house in N Mpls, in a panic – an honest-to-gosh, tear-filled, can’t-quite-breathe panic. I called my mom – even though it was the middle of the night. I sobbed – I wailed – eventually I made enough sense that she could determine I was not dying or injured, just panicked. She gave me permission to stay here and not go to graduate school. She said it was okay to realize that my dream may not be what I thought it was – and it was okay, if it was still my dream to pursue an MFA, to realize that this was not where I would find that dream. Phew. I took a deferment on my acceptance, thought about it a lot, applied to a school closer to home (they didn’t accept me), and ultimately decided that maybe Mom was right. This wasn’t my dream anymore. I could still do theater, but I didn’t have to live in a smoke-filled double-wide in poverty to make it happen. I stayed a while longer in N Mpls, moved south of downtown into a duplex, which I eventually bought. And life took some different turns. And I’m good with that.

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  13. WP ate my original post.

    For all the moving around we did when I was a kid, I think the hardest move was after I was a mom – when we were moving back to Mpls from Winona. Husband had exhausted computer progamming possibilities in Winona, but had found one with Minnegasco, and we moved in June to S. Mpls. We’d been gone four years, and most of my “former friends” were still living the single life. It was before I discovered part time bookstore jobs, before I got involved with the Waldorf community, and was the loneliest summer I can remember. Joel and I missed our Winona friends, and didn’t discover the couple of dozen kids in the next block till later… I think he and I made some trips down to see my folks in Iowa.

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  14. I think my most traumatic move was when my office moved, over 20 years ago. I had bought my house in St. Paul within reasonable walking distance of my workplace, with a nearby bus line to guard against bad weather. Then the organization moved to downtown Minneapolis. I have always tried to avoid having a commute that required driving, and in particular a freeway commute. Just didn’t want to join that club. The new office made my bus commute at least two hours per day, part of it spent on the freeway. When traffic was slowed by bad weather or road construction, it got longer. I never made peace with that decision.

    To make matters worse, my space in the new office wasn’t what I expected. Leaving St. Paul, we were told to put stickers on all the fixtures so we could find our stuff when we got there. Only when we arrived I discovered that my desk had been repurposed somewhere else. I still had the pencil drawer from the desk, in a flat box with all my papers and pencils in it, but no place to put the drawer in the new desk. The new desk had no shallow drawers, just a file drawer.

    In a guerilla maneuver, I found my old desk and removed the drawer hardware from the underside. I then brought a drill to work and installed the hardware on the underside of the new desk, and slid my pencil drawer into it.

    You can make me take the bus all the way to downtown Minneapolis and back every day, but I’m not giving up my pencil drawer, damnit.

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    5. Insert (is it?) Ann Reed singing “Power Tools Are a Girl’s Best Friend” here. (Can’t find it anywhere.)

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  15. Greetings! My most traumatic move was when I moved to Minneapolis from Green Bay and left my family and hometown forever. I came here to go to college and never looked back. It wasn’t overly traumatic, but it was certainly a big deal for me — rather freeing in a way. Finally had a chance to get out from under the shadow of my 4 wonderful older sisters and make my own way. I missed my family, but found friends (and my husband) here. I only go back to visit.

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  17. I was browsing this book in B & N on Friday.
    http://www.thepowerofintroverts.com/
    Apparently it is fairly common for introverts to make the move that I did in junior high: to choose to move out of my introverted self into an extroverted self. I did know that many people with careers like min (teaching, pastor, presenter) are really introverts. I did not know that lots of us are people who made the choice as I did in junior high in response to the social issues of junior high.
    I have never been happy with myself for that move. I would to answer the question metaphorically, as I often do, and say that was my most traumatic move. I may have to violate my rule against buying books any more (since our library, of course does not have it) and see if she says if many of them like me have been unhappy with the move. Seriously considering making the intentional choice to move back into quiet, where I am sure I belong.

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    1. If you do, Clyde, please do us here on the blog a favor, and confine the “move back into quiet” to the spoken, not written word.

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