Last month, my husband, my father, my sister and I hiked the Grand Canyon rim-to-rim.Starting from the North Rim, we took the North Kaibab Trail down and across the canyon floor, 14 miles to Phantom Ranch. We camped at the ranch, then took Bright Angel up the South Rim.

Over the past 15 years, my husband and I have hiked all over North America. We’ve hiked in Lake Louise, Canada; Yosemite, California; Yellowstone, Wyoming; Zion, Utah; Badlands, South Dakota; Smoky Mountains, Tennessee; and Nueva Vallarta, Mexico. We’ve hiked a lot, but we knew the Grand Canyon hike was going to be a big deal. I’m not sure we realized, however, how much we would learn from the experience.

Here are some of the lessons I took away from the trails:

Weather - We were all concerned about the weather. Hiking in August can be deadly with temperatures at the bottom sometimes reaching 115 degrees. We lucked out. On the way down, we had good cloud cover. The hottest we saw was 98, and that was brief. On the way up, we ran into Arizona’s monsoon season. It rained about 2/3 of our trip up Bright Angel, and the temperatures stayed in the 70’s. The weather saved us because I’m pretty sure my sister would not have made it out of the canyon if it had been in the 90’s. Which brings me to the next lesson I learned…

Training is everything - I started training in January. Minimum of 20 minutes daily on our elliptical machine. By July, I doing 30-35 minutes on an incline. I was frustrated because I didn’t lose much weight, but when we started coming out of that canyon, I realized what a difference that training had made. I had little problem coming up Bright Angel. My knees got wobbly toward the end, and I was very sore for about 24 hours, but everyone is. My poor sister somehow underestimated the Grand Canyon, however, and she did not train adequately. My husband, my dad and I spent the hike up berating, cajoling, comforting and bribing her up the trail. Thank God for the cool weather or we would have left her down there.

Trail conditions - My husband and I have been on dozens of trails. Some have been rough, some steep, some long, some treacherous. The Grand Canyon trails are all of the above and then some. We had never seen trails that were alternately wet mud, slippery rock, deep sand, high drop-offs, awkward steps the whole way. Twenty-two miles of every conceivable trail condition. Oh, and did I mention the mule poop?

Mules are the poopiest creatures in the animal kingdom - We saw them a couple of times. I was actually surprised at first sight because they look like horses, not burros or donkeys like you see on TV or in movie depictions of the Grand Canyon. They’re lovely to look at, but they poop all over the trails. And it was raining. Need I say more?

Shoes - I will never hike again in anything but Salomon hiking shoes. One of the tutors in the University Writing Center has hiked the Appalachian Trail, and when she learned I was hiking the canyon, she brought in her Salomons for me to try. I worked out in them for a few days and liked them. After hiking the canyon with them, I love them. Light, strong and waterproof, the shoes ensured my feet never gave me a problem. My poor husband wore trail-runners, and the soles were not thick enough to protect the bottoms of his feet from the rocky parts of the trail. My dad wore hiking boots; the wide ankle openings caught rain and sand the whole way up. My sister wore Reeboks which did not give her enough cushion for her knees. Salomons, forever!

Shorts - I may have gotten the shoes right, but I screwed up royally with the shorts. I wore my silky Reebox athletic shorts that I always work out in. I didn’t consider that I would be sweating, rained-on, and walking for hours and hours. My poor thighs were raw by the time we got out. Next time - long cargo shorts like my husband wore!

Wilderness still exists - There are still a few places on this planet where you can’t get a cell phone signal or an internet service provider; the Grand Canyon is one of them. In fact, snail mail is delivered by mule. We sent our kids a postcard from Phantom Ranch. Pretty cool.

Pacing is crucial - Forgetting to eat when you’re hiking in 90-degree heat is a very bad thing. We ate lunch and then didn’t eat until we reached Phantom Ranch. We kept thinking it was right around the corner, and we had dinner reservations, so it seemed stupid to eat. But by the time we got there, my blood sugar had bottomed out. I felt drunk. Not the happy drunk, but the room-is-spinning-I’m-gonna-throw-up drunk. Snacks are good.

The Canyon skews people’s sense of distance - When you’re going up at a 20-degree grade, and the trail is rough and doing long switchbacks, it is very hard to get a sense of distance. Throw in the fact that there are very few mile markers in the Grand Canyon, especially on North Kaibab, and it becomes problematic. Pacing yourself is difficult when you’re not sure if you have 2 miles or 4 miles to go. My sister and my dad ran out of water on the way down because of this. My husband and I neglected to eat. My sister became half-delirious on the way up. Some mile markers would be nice down there. I know the National Park Service has had their budget slashed, but how much would a couple signs cost?

Remarkable individuals - Speaking of the National Park Service, at the Pumping Station on North Kaibab, we met a young ranger named Silas Aiken. He was a remarkable person for several reasons. First, he was raised at the Pumping Station house. His father was an artist and had a contract with NPS. Silas grew up in the canyon; his parents would carry him up and down until he was three years old. Then he had to hike it himself. Second, he had actually met my father 13 years ago, the second time Dad hiked the canyon. My dad remembered his father, who is a well-known painter; Dad also remembered Silas because he had been handing out Gatorade to hikers back then. Now a ranger, Silas has a Facebook page even though he doesn’t have internet access most of the time.

Light pollution sucks - We see so few stars in the city. We camped at Phantom Ranch at the bottom of the canyon. The night was clear, so we didn’t put our rain fly up. We fell asleep looking up at the entire Milky Way.

Phantom Ranch has great food - Of course, any food tastes fantastic when you’ve just finished hiking 14 miles in a desert canyon, but the salad was fresh and had every vegetable you can imagine. The beef stew was hearty and perfectly seasoned, and the chocolate cake was sinful. And for the first time since I was a little girl, I did not feel guilty about eating every bite of that dessert!

It’s a small world after all - At Phantom Ranch, we met a man from the east side of Indianapolis. His daughter still lives in Fishers, a suburb to the north of Indy. We also met a very nice couple from Chicago, and we talked with them about the Bears/Colts rivalry. We also told them about the White Sox/Yankees game we would be attending later that month. They were happy to hear we were Yankees fans rather than Sox fans. (They loved the Cubbies.)

Colorado River - The little green line you see at the bottom of the canyon when you’re standing on the rim? Yeah, that’s one big, bad river. It is wide, and it is wild.

My dad is my hero - My father is one of the most amazing people I’ve ever met. This was my father’s fourth time hiking the Grand Canyon rim-to-rim. You would never know it unless you asked him or one of his very proud daughters or wife told you. He has done some remarkable things. Quietly. He’ll be happy to tell you about it if you ask, but you could say, “Hey, we’re going to the Grand Canyon next week,” and my father would not take the opportunity to bring up his accomplishment. This was very likely his last time to do it, and he got even quieter than usual on the way up. I asked up if he was okay, and he admitted to being a little sad. “Probably the last time I’ll get to see this,” he said. He turned 70 about a week after he got home from Arizona, and he’d promised my mother he wouldn’t try it again because she worries too much. But the canyon is in his heart, and I couldn’t be prouder to be his daughter.

Still, I don’t know if I will hike the canyon rim-to-rim again. Doing it once is something I’ll never forget, but it was hard. And yet, it seems a shame to waste all these good lessons… 

My husband bought me a “smart phone” a couple weeks ago. I tried in vain to explain to him that I did not need one, that I did not want one, that my old phone was fine. Sadly, his once torrid love affair with his iPhone is over, and he was ready to jump ship, dump AT&T and get the latest, greatest phone on the market. My old phone was a casualty of his divorce from Apple/AT&T.

Not that I liked my old phone either. It’s just that it was simple, and I was used to it. If you know me or if you’ve read my blog before, you know I have an aversion to all phones.

I was one of those rare teenagers who avoided calls even from my closest friends. My mother used to make me order pizza, and I would break into a cold sweat. Phone conversation does not work to my strengths. I’m not a glib conversationalist; I don’t think in quick sound bites, plus I’m pretty sarcastic and rather terse. Over the phone, I come off as rude which is ironic because people who meet me face-to-face think I’m quite sunny and friendly.

I have a visceral and irrational reaction to a phone ringing: I am instantly angry. I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s because I’m overscheduled, and an impromptu phone call is an inconvenience. Maybe it’s because I always have to run to get the phone since I’m not one of those people who keeps it on them every second of the day. (Sorry, I have too many other more important things to think about than where my stupid phone is at the moment.)  Even if it’s someone I really want to talk to right this instant (which is rare), I’m already mad when I answer the phone.

Anyway, now I’ve got this “smart phone” - an HTC EVO. So far, I’ve found two things I like about it. First, it has a decent camera. Second, I can waste more time on Facebook. That’s about it for positives, and for me, neither of those two things means much. We have an awesome camera - a digital SLR that I adore. It is far faster than my phone and takes far better pictures. So my EVO’s phone is nice, but not that big a deal to me. And as far as wasting more time on FB, well, I don’t need to waste more time.

I’d like to be more productive, actually, but the internet interface on the EVO confuses me. It’s dodgy, and the screen seems to arbitrarily flip to horizontal or vertical, regardless of which way I’m holding it. Plus, I am text-challenged. I am not dextrous, so I’m very slow at typing on the phone. And it infuriates me when the phone tries to “help” me by giving me suggestions about the word I’m trying to type. Because of my lack of dexterity, I often hit the wrong button and end up using one of the phone’s erroneous suggestions. Yesterday, I posted a comment on FB: “Imitation is the interest form of flatten.” Argh!

The difficulty I have using the phone keeps me from using it for anything important. So I just go to Facebook. Or try to read the news if I can figure out how. Most websites I like to visit on my computer look alien on my phone; I have trouble navigating sites I’ve used for years. Maybe in a few years, the Internet will catch up to phone technology, but right now, surfing the web on my EVO is an exercise in frustration.

My husband thinks I’m being an ungrateful, spoiled brat. He bought me this wonderful toy, and he loves his. How can I not appreciate this wonder of technology? I try not to complain for fear of looking like a fumbling, old-fashioned, anti-technology hag, but how smart can a phone be if it can’t set a simple alarm? I was almost late on the first day of class because I hadn’t set the “day” as well as the time. Really? I can’t just tell this wonder of technology to ring at 7am? I have to tell it 7am on Saturday? I guess I’ll just drag out my old Mickey Mouse alarm clock with the bell on top. It can manage that difficult task just fine.

Plus, I don’t like that I can turn off the EVO’s alarm with a swipe of my finger. I am not conscious when my alarm goes off; I just flail around to stop whatever is making noise, and I have accidentally turned it off several times. I need something more deliberate.

“We can get you an app,” says my well-meaning husband, trying to be helpful. “You can just download an app with a simpler clock that’s more difficult to turn off.”

But I don’t want to spend an hour looking for an application that will make something that should be simple - simple. I’ll just go get my Mickey clock, thanks. The phone is supposed to save me time, not make me spend more time trying to make it work for me.

And that is where this phone has lost me. Its primary function is supposed to be phone calls, right? Well, whenever I’m on campus, 15 miles from my home and right in the middle of downtown Indianapolis, I’m roaming. Yep. Roaming. Not a big deal except that before I discovered this geographic anomaly, I kept getting a bizarre error message from Verizon (we’re on Sprint) whenever I tried to call my mom or mother-in-law to check on my children. I finally resorted to calling from a decades-old, push-button phone on a landline in our Writing Center. Of course, now that we know about the roaming problem, I can just remember to add a 1 and the area code EVERY TIME I MAKE A LOCAL CALL AT WORK! Convenient.

In addition to that little technical glitch is a design flaw that is not only maddening but also insulting. Every time I hold the phone to my face, my fat cheeks hit buttons, usually the Mute or the End Call. I’ve gotten to the point where I just put the stupid thing on speaker every time I have a conversation to avoid dropping the call and to avoid being reminded that I have chubby cheeks.

Other people love their EVOs, and my friends and students love to make fun of me for being phone-a-phobic. I just don’t see why I HAVE to have the latest and greatest. If other people want to spend their lives with their face buried in their phones, that’s fine. Why can’t I just have something simple? Whatever happened to buying what is right for you and not what is right for you according to everyone else? I’m not a phone person. It doesn’t make sense for me to have a super-complex phone.

The whole thing makes me feel old and disgruntled, which isn’t fair either because I don’t dislike all technology. I’ve been a computer analyst, software designer, webmaster, and database manager for many years. Computers make sense to me, but phones feel like an invasion in many ways. An invasion of time, an invasion of privacy, an invasion of energy, an invasion of the moment. I do not like them well enough to invest the time and energy it will evidently take for me to learn to use this fabulous phone.

And if I do learn it, I’m sure it will be just in time for us to upgrade.

Humpty Dumpty said gaily… “That shows that there are three hundred and sixty-four days when you might get un-birthday presents”
“Certainly,” said Alice.
“And only ONE for birthday presents, you know. There’s glory for you!”
“I don’t know what you mean by ‘glory,’”Alice said.
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. “Of course you don’t—till I tell you. I meant ‘there’s a nice knock-down argument for you!’”
“But ‘glory’ doesn’t mean ‘a nice knock-down argument,’” Alice objected.
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you CAN make words mean so many different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.”
Alice was too much puzzled to say anything, so after a minute Humpty Dumpty began again. “They’ve a temper, some of them—particularly verbs, they’re the proudest—adjectives you can do anything with, but not verbs—however, I can manage the whole lot of them! Impenetrability! That’s what I say!”
“Would you tell me, please,” said Alice “what that means?”
“Now you talk like a reasonable child,” said Humpty Dumpty, looking very much pleased. “I meant by ‘impenetrability’ that we’ve had enough of that subject, and it would be just as well if you’d mention what you mean to do next, as I suppose you don’t mean to stop here all the rest of your life.”
“That’s a great deal to make one word mean,” Alice said in a thoughtful tone.
“When I make a word do a lot of work like that,” said Humpty Dumpty, “I always pay it extra.”
“Oh!” said Alice. She was too much puzzled to make any other remark.

Lewis Carroll’s passage from “Through the Looking Glass” is near and dear to many linguists because it demonstrates so succinctly some of the fundamental debates about language: Where does definition stop and connotation begin? Who wields the power of language in a dialogue – the speaker or the listener? Who has the authority to determine what a word means and how it is used?

As an English teacher and a writer, I think about these general ideas all the time. But lately, I’ve noticed an odd little movement that has me thinking about this on a more specific level.

The movement has to do with the word “American.”

Lately, I’ve seen posts on Internet message boards and heard comments from people on television and even from students regarding the meaning of “American.” There is a small group of people who disapprove of United States citizens monopolizing the term to label themselves. After all, the argument goes, anyone living on the North or South American continents is an “American.”

Sure. I’ll buy that. But what purpose does it serve to define the term only that way and strip it of its other definitions? According to Merriam-Webster, “American” has three meanings: 1) an American Indian of North or South America  2) an inhabitant of North or South America  3) a citizen of the United States. To suddenly decide that it is offensive for inhabitants of the United States to call themselves “American” because we’re leaving out the rest of the people in the Western Hemisphere, seems contrived.

The argument seems to be coming from uber-left-wing progressives and non-U.S. citizens. If you know me or if you’ve read my blog before, you know that I’ve got nothing against either of these groups. I’m a moderate liberal myself, and I’m certainly no xenophobe. Speaking as a linguist, though, their argument is illogical.

First, if we don’t call ourselves “Americans,” what do we call ourselves? “U.S. citizens?” “Yankees?” (That’d go over well with Southerners.) “Residents of the country north of Mexico?” I mean, there aren’t any concise, useful synonyms. It’s not like an offensive epithet for which there are many, more appropriate terms.  It’s actually a unique word.

Secondly, and this might sound immature, but we were the first nation in the Americas to break free from our colonial empire. When we first began calling ourselves “Americans,” Mexicans were still calling themselves “Spanish” or “Aztec.” Brazilians were still calling themselves “Portugese.” Canadians were still calling themselves “British” or “French.” It’s the old playground claim – we were here first, so it’s ours! Seriously, though, from this perspective, it becomes pretty silly to be offended by our use of “American.” When we first started calling ourselves that, no one else wanted the name.

Most people living in the Western Hemisphere still don’t want the name. Call a Brazilian an “American” and they will correct you. “No, I’m Brazilian.” If you persist, they’ll probably laugh. “Oh, I get it!” Most of the Mexicans, Canadians, Central Americans and South Americans I know would think it was kind of a joke.

Besides, to limit the term “American” to its second definition is to render the term fairly useless. It’s like calling Germans “Eastern Hemispherians.” Who does that? Why would they? Make a term too broad, and it becomes ineffectual.

Human beings just don’t think of themselves in such big terms. Sure, some people like to think of themselves as global citizens, but they don’t usually speak that way in normal conversation. I mean, if you say to someone, “Where are you from?” and they answer, “I am a citizen of the world,” you’re going to think they’re a nutjob.

Most of the time, depending on where you are and to whom you are speaking, you would answer, “I’m from Paris,” or “I’m from Saudi Arabia.” Human beings have a general propensity for putting ourselves in smaller communities. And it’s not just endemic to people in the United States; Great Britain has extensive experience with this phenomenon. Just call a Scotsman “British” sometime, and you’ll see what I mean.  We tend to identify ourselves locally, not globally, sometimes even in direct opposition to political realities. (Like my Iranian friends who call themselves “Persian” even though Persia has not existed politically since 1935.)

Our loyalties lie with our countries, our regions, our cities or towns, our neighborhoods, our schools. We’re not loyal to our hemisphere. Thinking of ourselves in pan-continental terms is not natural to us, and I don’t think it will ever really catch on.

Then again, limiting the word “American” to only its second definition not only makes its third definition offensive, but also its first. Try telling a Navajo or a Cherokee that they cannot call themselves American, and you’re likely to get punched in the face. And rightly so. After all, they were here before the Europeans. If anyone is going to change the definition, shouldn’t it be up to them and not a radically politicized group of word police or a bunch of people who don’t even live here?

Of course, people are, like Humpty Dumpty, quite free to call themselves or others whatever they like.  Americans don’t pass laws restrict our own speech, and we certainly cannot expect to restrict the speech of people in other countries. If these folks want to redefine “American,” though, it’s going to take a long time. Words don’t change their meanings on a dime.  In the meantime, it’s just not a very clear way to communicate.  People who insist on calling all inhabitants of the West “Americans” will likely get the same reaction Humpty Dumpty got from Alice – a puzzled “oh.”