About twelve days of nodding on a camel ought to loosen a man’s spine into chronic politeness.
-American painter Frederic Church, in a letter describing his camel trip to Petra, February 1868
Horsemen-turned-cameleers must forget all they’ve learned about how to hold their bodies in the saddle…back stiff, legs straight, thighs pressed tight, shoulders squared, heels down in the stirrup. Everything done on a camel is looser, and another three or four feet off the ground. Church was right, the spine nods off first, followed by the mind.