The could have been camels

So I'm driving to town along the river this morning, way up in the sticks where the land along the river features not fast-food restaurants but campgrounds and mobile homes and hunting cabins, when I saw camels, three of 'em, kneeling in a row in a low, foggy clearing. They looked like refugees from some Living Nativity scene; I looked around for magi bearing gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh. Maybe they got lost following a bright star in the fog and stopped at this campground to wait for morning.

Or maybe my eyes were playing tricks on me. I looked again, and instead of camels I saw three neat stacks of firewood, one two three, all in a row, each with a tall post at the front and a humped-up pile toward the back. Of course they weren't camels! The river's name allegedly comes from a Native American word referring to elk, but elk haven't lived here for centuries and camels never. A town up the river suffers from a plague of elephant statues, but I've never seen or heard of a camel, living or dead, dwelling along this river.

But early this morning, still bleary-eyed from sleep and pumping the caffeine into my system, I could have sworn I saw three camels sitting in the campground along the river and patiently awaiting the next stage in their journey.