Consider a sock.

Socks are worn on the feet. They are used to reduce friction, separate bare tootsies from hard leather, keep feet warm, dry and full of lint. Socks are made of nylon, wool, cotton, or a variety of highly-priced and trademark-protected synthetics. They can be half socks, ankle socks, knee socks, leotards, or body stockings. Socks can be pulled up on the leg so they will creep back into the boot or folded over the top of the boot so rocks can get inside. They can be subdued colors or fluorescent green. The latter is preferred so if you get lost you can stand on your head and attract attention by waggling your feet.

Socks can be used for a wind sock, pulled over the head and used as a disguise, pulled over the hand and used as a mitten, or filled with rocks and used as a blackjack. They can be unraveled and knitted into a dicky or crocheted into a doily. They can be used as a hat. They can be filled with water, placed in an icebox, and used as an icetray. They can be nailed up on the mantle on Christmas They can be filled with paperbacks and used as a bookbag. They can be equiped with a drawstring and used as a purse. They can be cut into strips and woven into potholders. The toe can be cut off and used for a nose warmer. The heel can be cut off and used for an elbow warmer. The ankle can be cut off and used for a wrist warmer. If you feet are getting cold by now, cut up an old glove and use it for a foot warmer.

With this wonderful world of unusual and exciting things go do with this fantastic new product, how can you any longer resist running out to buy 63 pairs of socks? Wonderful things can be done with 126 socks. If you every find a 124 legged mastodon, you can outfit both it and yourself at a moment's notice.

Consider a topo map.

A topo map is not, as the uninitiated might conjecture, a layout of Topo, North Dakota. It is a map containing a series of lines which represent changes in elevation. They are very useful for telling you where you should be and why you didn’t end up there. If a trail is marked along said series of lines, you can spend many happy hours arguing about where the route is with such enlightening comments as, “That can’t be the butte, you dope, the lines go IN.”.

If no trail is marked, the lines can help you discover the easiest, safest, most surefire route, with the help of experienced woodspersons who are happy to inform you that if you insist on trying to climb out at a point where 16 topo lines all run into one, don’t be surprised if you end up trapped halfway up a cliff.

Topo maps are printed on paper. They can be stored rolled-up so that they last longer, and when you try to look at anything on them they can insist on compacting themselves back into their accustomed form. They can be stored and carried folded up, so that the fold lines will eventually rub out all trace of elevation lines and vital lettering. Or they can be framed and hung on the wall with the routes you have traversed traced out in indelible ink, impressing people no end and falling down at inconvenient times, such as when your roommate is gone for the weekend and you’re reading ghost stories at midnight.

Top maps can be used to start fires, to write home for money on the back of, to rough draft a scathing letter to the editor, to use as emergency TP, to wrap fish, to housebreak a puppy, to make a kite, to print an underground newspaper on, to make insoles for your boots, to fold into a boat to cross the Colorado river, and to write to Legal Aid to bail you out when they catch you crossing the Colorado River.

Topo maps are printed with soulful ink, with beauty and truth, with mystery and abandon, and with mistakes so that geologists can make money by correcting them.

So why sit there wondering where the heck the Boucher Trail is located? Run out immediately and buy a topo map so you can unerringly lead people onto a trail that you’ve never been over before. Just because after three years of topo reading I wound up on the Apache instead of the Bass by reading one…

So run out and buy all the Grand Canyon quadrangles from Apache Point to Vishnu. Then buy the large maps of the Western and Eastern sections. Then the geologic Western, Central, and Eastern ones. Then you can begin on the Superstitions. Buy, consume, grow…

Consider a bandana.

A bandana is a square of material in a varity of colors with various and sundry designs executed thereon. A square is someone who refuses to sign a petition for fear of unduly upsetting the Establishment, but we needn't go into politics just precisely now. A bandana can be made of cotton,nylon, wool, silk, cardboard or aluminum foil. It can be red, navy blue, yellow,magenta, or puce. some people may aspire to carry a bandana composed of lavender paisley delicately embroidered onto a chartreuse background, but they soon find it doesn't pay to aspire beyond one's human limits.

A bandana can be used as a muffler to keep your neck warm, a scarf to keep your head cool, a hat to keep your part from being sunburned, or a belt to keep your pants up. It can be utilized as a snare to catch animals (or, if you aspire to lavender and chartreuse, to scare them to death), a fishing line, a hammock for midgets, a net for filtering water, or a necktie for your next necktie party. Bandanas can be used to tie down your hat so it won't fly away in the wind, your canteen so it won't get washed down the rapids, or your neighbor so he won't decapitate you while you ransack his pack (which, incidentally, was tied up with a banadana so it wouldn't fall over while you were ransacking it).

Several bandanas can be tied together to make a tent, a ground cloth, an air mattress to be used with extreme haste, or a graduation cap and gown. They can be cut into pieces and used to play checkers. They can be folded up small and used to patch your jeans. They can be unraveled (or raveled) and woven into a macrame belt. They can be lined with foil and used to boil water. They can be tied together and used as sportswear accessory while your wet pants dry (which probably got wet when they fell down while crossing a creek because you were using a bandana as a belt). They can be used to hold your hair back while you hike, to hold your food while you day hike, or to hold over your face while you hold up the train. They can be used to secure your roommate's hands so she will stop typing while you study for your algebra exam, and they can be used to secure the instructor to the desk while you and your cohorts abscond with the exam that he had no right to give the second week of school.

All in all, a bandana is something no hiker should be without. A bandana is truth, beauty, and a little bit of Rit dye. Join the ranks of bandana lovers, and you too can join in Chicita Bandana's anthem, "Bandana, bandana, bandana is good enough for me".

I hate to hike. I get tired and dirty and hot and scared and blistered and my knee hurts going downhill, my feet hurt going level, and my body hurts going uphill. I worry about rain and get sweat in my eyes and sand in my noodles. I fall down or trip over rattlesnakes or beer cans and curse bitterly at graffiti on the rocks.

What, then, are my motives as ever week I appear, hat in hand and ace bandage on knee to further neglect my bod and state of mental health? I am not, as many claim, a masochist. As my sister claims, a wee bit dumb. As my mother claimed, going through a phase. As my shrink claims, seeking peer approval (at the bottom of the Grand Canyon?).

The analytical mind grappled with the problem and finally resulted in the essence of hiking filtering through my mind.

Waking up to the sounds of birds and breezes and a pink blush in the East. Startling a mule deer who stood three feet away from me for five minutes before we noticed each other. Walking for 14 miles and finding a spring bubbling with water at clear as sunlight. Washing dishes to the rhythm of the rapids. Lying awake at night tracing the course of the Big Dipper as it swings ponderously around Polaris. Standing on a peak where the silence is so complete that the sound of my heartbeat shatters it.

It is entirely removed from the dirt and pettiness of the towns. How can anything be petty in the Grand Canyon? Walking along the trail with grandeur ahead and wonder behind. Waking up to snow-soaked boots and socks and sweatshirts, and all the dry gear in the pack buried under six inches of snow.

Then the simple things like a ray of sun, a pair of dry socks, a clean bandana to whip all that mud off, a dry match, and a cactus frosted with ice begin to fit into the scheme of Things that Make the Hike Bearable. And of course, standing on Miner’s Summit to see Weaver’s Needle with a cap of snow was worth the whole windy, wet, icy, worried night.

I have learned the measure of a mile, the worth of the simple, soul cleansing at of walking, the simplicity of wilderness and a means to escape a worth where nothing makes sense.

This, then, was and always shall be the final reward for daring to step off the paved road into the unknown. May there always be an unknown to step off into.

Okay, so the mule affectionados say it is classically unfair that they are now limited to 10 Phantom mules a day.

Try getting a permit to hike the Corridor during rim-to-rim season. Or anywhere in the Canyon during Spring Break or Thanksgiving. Or during most of the spring and fall.

Try getting a permit for a private river trip. Even with the lottery system, it still takes most people ten years to be drawn.

I am constantly (well, not constantly but often enough) asked if visitors are allow to mountain bike, hang-glide, or BASE jump.

Let's say the Park Service sold the Grand Canyon to private concerns, and there would be unlimited mule rides, backpacking, and river running, not to mention downhill mountain biking (with an uphill shuttle provided) BASE jumping, Xtreme sports events -- everyone could visit anywhere and do anything. The Canyon would become a place that none of us would wish to visit.

And so far as not being able to ride a mule, over Martin Luther King weekend this year -- a three day weekend AND a fee free weekend, three persons rode down to the Ranch on Wednesday. Two rode down on Friday. No one on Saturday. No one on Sunday. So a rider might not be able to get a reservation for spring or fall, but then, neither can most hikers. Bundle up and go in the winter.

So I have hiked to Phantom Ranch, and as of last weekend, I have ridden the mule. I prefer to hike.
When I hike I can carry whatever I am willing to haul. On the mule, I am limited to two plastic bags. Since I had a layover day on which I wanted to hike, I needed some extra stuff.

When I hike I can carry as much water as I wish. On the mule I have a bota bag (I hate drinking out of those) that holds one liter.The wranglers carry extra water to refill, so more water is a possibility. Of course, if I drink enough to be hydrated I need to, not to put too fine a point on it, use the outhouses. There is only one stop on the mule ride, so if one is hydrated, one is in dire straits. Again, the wranglers will stop at the outhouses, but one has to ask, and the whole string has to stop, and the mules have to be restrained so they don't run off while I am using the facilities.

As for the much-vaunted education one gets on the mules, here are some of the things I learned:
The pictographs are painted with cochineal (not).

The resthouses were CCC kitchens until they were turned into resthouses. The CCC did not build the Bright Angel Trail. They did build the resthouses, but as resthouses, not kitchens.

Cedar Breaks is the only place that cedar grows. There is no true cedar in North America, and if they are talking about Juniper, it grows all over the place.

The Colorado River cut the Grand Canyon 80 million years ago. A good trick, since the Laramide Orogeny was only 65 million years ago.

Scientists have proven that the Colorado River used to flow north. This is one idea, but it does not enjoy common acceptance, and it has certainly not been proven by anyone.

There is petrified wood in the inner gorge. The ruins at the Boat Beach were habitated by Havasupai Indians. Brama Temple is called that because it looks like a bull. I could go on and on.

Riding the mules is not, as many have said, for the infirm. It hurts the knees, the back, and the ankles. One needs a strong body core to sit upright, and strong thighs to control the mule. If one has any problem with heights, parts of that trail are terrifying.