Well, sir, it has been my experience that when a man starts feeling too pleased with his own civilization—when he begins to believe that indoor plumbing and adjustable mattresses are the pinnacle of human achievement—the universe has a way of taking him down a peg. My friend Eli, a man of boundless optimism and the constitution of a startled gazelle, conceived the notion that our souls required sand. And not just any sand, but the particular variety found in Wadi Rum, Jordan, which he described in a brochure as “a vast, echoing cathedral of stone and light.”

I told him I’d had quite enough of echoing cathedrals, having once been trapped in a sermon in one, but he was insistent. So it was that Jim, which is myself, and Eli found ourselves in the possession of two of the most disillusioned-looking camels I have ever laid eyes upon. Mine was named something the Bedouin guide, Mahmoud, assured me was “Swift-As-The-Wind.” I called him Belshazzar, for he moved with the regal, gloomy deliberation of a king who knows his empire is about to fall.

Eli was thrilled. “Jim, look at them! Ships of the desert!”

“I’ve seen more animation in a ship’s figurehead, Eli,” said I. “And I suspect they share a similar disposition.”

The trek began. Now, there are two ways to ride a camel, I discovered. The first is the way you see in picture books: a noble, swaying gait, like a slow-motion metronome set to the rhythm of the ages. The second is the reality, which is a violent, bone-jarring, side-to-side lurching, as if the beast is trying to unscrew your spine from your pelvis with every step. Belshazzar seemed to be experimenting with a third, more personal method designed specifically for my torment.

The landscape, I will admit, was calculated to steal a man’s breath and not give it back. Great cliffs of rose-red stone rose up like the petrified ruins of forgotten gods. The sand was the color of fire and blood, and the silence was so profound you could hear your own thoughts getting lost in it. Eli, of course, was in his element.

“It’s sublime, Jim! It makes you feel so… insignificant!” he cried, waving an arm.

“Eli,” I grunted, clutching Belshazzar’s saddle as he attempted to veer into a thorny bush for no discernible reason, “a missed mortgage payment makes me feel insignificant. This just makes my backside feel sore.”

Mahmoud, a man of few words and a smile that suggested he’d heard it all before, just pointed and said, “This is where Lawrence of Arabia walked.”

“I don’t doubt it,” I replied. “And look what happened to him. I’d wager his camel started it.”

As the sun began to bleed out across the sky, painting the canyon in shades of orange and purple you couldn’t find in a painter’s box, we made camp. A simple fire, a pot of strong, sweet tea, and the vast, empty bowl of the desert night above us.

And then the stars came out.

Now, I have seen the stars from the deck of a Mississippi steamboat, and that is a fine sight. But this, sir, this was different. It was not a smattering of twinkling lights; it was a furious, boiling spill of diamond dust across the velvet of eternity. A billion stars? It was a number so vast it made a mockery of counting. Eli was struck dumb, for which I was profoundly grateful. He just lay on his back, his mouth agape, like a trout waiting for a fly.

“It puts things in perspective, doesn’t it, Jim?” he finally whispered, his voice full of awe.

“It does, Eli,” I whispered back, feeling a rare moment of genuine peace. “It surely does. For instance, it makes me see quite clearly that my blanket is on an anthill.”

The rest of the night was a comedy of cosmic proportions. We slept, or rather, we attempted to sleep, under that breathtaking immensity. The desert cold, which arrives the moment the sun departs, seeped into our bones. A curious fox, who I suspect was in league with Belshazzar, investigated our supplies. And the stars, so beautiful from a distance, became a billion unblinking, judgmental eyes observing my every shiver and shift.

At one point, I heard Eli murmur, “The universe is so vast, and we are but specks.”

“Speak for yourself, Eli,” I said, pulling my hat down over my face. “At the moment, I am a very cold, very hard-done-by speck. And if that camel chews any louder, I intend to become a vengeful speck.”

The morning came, glorious and warm. Every ache from the night was baked out by the rising sun. Belshazzar looked at me with his long-lashed, deeply stupid eyes and let out a gurgling groan. I felt a strange affection for the creature. We had suffered together.

As we mounted up for the trek back, Eli was already planning his next adventure. “Perhaps the Himalayas next, Jim! To see the roof of the world!”

I looked out at the endless, beautiful, inhospitable desert. I looked at Belshazzar, who was already plotting new forms of discomfort. I looked at the fading stars, winking out one by one as if exhausted from their nightly display.

“Eli,” I said, “the only roof I want to see for the foreseeable future is the one on my front porch, with a glass of iced tea within easy reach. Now, let’s go see if civilization has managed to invent a better saddle while we were away.”

*****

And, you know I would never leave you while neglecting the obligatory shameless self-promotion. New Yesterdays is available through the following links: Books-A-Million, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon as well as your favorite bookshops. The Audiobook is available from Libro.fm, as well as Amazon.