Cell phone lover seduced by the call of the canyon

Moki Mac River Expeditions clearly stated the things not to bring on our Grand Canyon float trip. No radios, expensive jewelry or firearms. And no cell phones.

I was in love with my phone, so I sneaked it in my backpack, rationalizing that I’d need it in the Las Vegas airport. Nine family members, on several flights, were meeting there for the beginning of our Grand Canyon adventure.

Yet, by the final day of this adventure – as we trudged on foot up the 9.5 mile Bright Angel Trail leading out of the canyon – my cell phone languished at the bottom of my bag on the back of a mule. I was hoping the phone would slip out of the bag and be crushed by the mule. The love affair with my phone was over, because for a week I lived where communication happens in an ancient, deeper way.

Cell phones don’t even work in the 280-mile-long, one-mile-deep Grand Canyon.

The river guides, who rowed our tour group’s five rafts along 87 miles of the Colorado River, had satellite phones, but they never used them. Those phones were for major emergencies, and we didn’t have any, though potential lurked everywhere.

The canyon is home to scorpions and rattlesnakes.

The day hikes led to cliffs where one awkward step could lead to a bone-crushing plunge. The raft behind ours flipped the first day. It looked like a child’s toy overturning in a huge, frothy bathtub, and the raft’s five occupants flew out like Gumby figures. Luckily, no one was hurt.

With no cell phones, laptops, radios or TVs, we observed alternative forms of communication.

Our guides stood up in the rafts just before the major rapids, reading the water’s path. They signaled each other about their strategy in river language I didn’t understand.

The canyon walls, some fashioned from 1.84-billion-year-old rock, communicated little of their essence.

I saw what looked like faces etched into the stone, carved by millions of years of erosion. I saw ancient tribal chiefs and wise crones in that rock; none of them smiling.

Their message seemed to be: We accept you in this canyon begrudgingly. Pass quickly.

Human messages got through in interesting ways. The second morning, as we packed up tents and sleeping bags for a day on the river, boats from another rafting group passed by our camp. A man hollered: “Is there a Becky from Spokane with you?”

It was a guy named Simon, a Washington state assistant attorney general. He had spoken the week before with S-R reporter Alison Boggs, who had just returned from 21 days floating the canyon. Simon told Alison he would be floating the canyon the following week, same as our group. And this led to the person-to-person call from river to shore.

We heard no newscasts and read no newspapers. Instead, we talked the canyon’s news.

We debated our favorite rock colors – red, black or gray? We discussed the best way to describe the shade of the trail dust that dyed our shoes – Georgia clay or Southwest mauve?

In Florence, tourists sometimes feel faint, nauseated and overwhelmed while viewing the city’s ancient Italian art. The phenomenon is called Stendhal’s Syndrome, named after a 19th-century French writer who first described it. My sister-in-law Angela said we suffered from Grandhal’s Syndrome, and the worst symptoms appeared after we exited the canyon.

Radios, TVs, newspapers – and the slot machines in the Las Vegas airport – overwhelmed us with their noise and nothingness.

I kept my cell phone turned off.

Any words spoken through it would have been useless to describe our experience in the grand place, in the canyon that will stand in stone long after we humans have passed on, carrying our silly cell phones with us.