I think my GPS is trying to kill me

I think my GPS is trying to kill me. GPS, as in Global Positioning System. The little electronic doohickey that you carry around to keep from getting lost.

I've noticed a troubling trend over the past few years. It seems that every time I head out into the mountains, it's like playing a game of roulette with my electronic gadget where I may become stranded because of faulty information.

For example, there was the time I went hunting and missed my truck on the way back by no more than 100 yards. That simple miscalculation led to an entire day slogging through a foot of new snow, running out of water and puking out my guts in the shower from dehydration when I finally did get home.

And before you think, what an idiot, why didn't he just eat some snow, I did. It doesn't work when you're really hoofing it, hence the puking in the shower.

This entire adventure could have been avoided if I hadn't relied on my GPS for directions. The screen showed right where my truck was, but that tiny shot didn't match up with the terrain and I quickly wandered off course.

There's another dimension to this problem, too.

My wife is convinced that I'll get lost out in the mountains and die. Given my recent history, she might actually have cause for concern.

I always try to soften my stories of wilderness adventure, just a bit, so as to protect my blushing bride's nerves, but it never seems to work.

She eventually gets the whole story out of me and then it's all that more difficult to get out for a hike or some hunting the next time. It's almost enough to make a guy wish for simpler, more unfettered times. Almost.

When I was a kid, I never got lost. I'd scarf down some breakfast and hit the woods first off and not show up back home until it was dark. I never looked at a map or used a lousy GPS to figure out where I was, I just knew. Somehow, as I've gotten older, that's changed.

My innate sense of direction has been replaced by an evil electronic consciousness that's trying to kill me.

What we may have here is the beginning of a revolution within the electronic awareness. Just maybe, like in "Terminator," the machines are conspiring against us and killing us off through misdirection.

Another example, one of many, of the artificial intelligence plotting against me is when I took a buddy hunting, out to one of my favorite honey-holes. It's a spot far off the main roads with only elk trails leading into it.

We got to the secluded valley about an hour after sunup and were thanked for our effort with a fresh killed elk calf out in the middle of the grass. After cursing the wolves, as all hunters do, we decided to drop down the creek and come out along the river. It looked simple on the GPS.

The further we went down the stream, the steeper the hillsides became until we were trapped between canyonesque banks, stumbling through the water at the bottom.

When the stream bed ended in a 200-foot waterfall, we didn't have a lot of options as to where to go. It looked simple enough on the GPS but, there was the waterfall, taunting us.

My buddy hasn't taken me up on any of my invitations to go hunting since.

I don't think I'm alone in this experience. Heck, the news is full of stories about people getting lost, and even dying, because they got lost while relying on their global positioning gadget. I remember one story about a couple being misdirected and getting lost for three days in a park.

Now, how you get lost in a park for three days, I don't know, but that's a different question.

I believe that the root of the problem is that the tiny screens just don't provide a complete enough picture to navigate accurately by. Throw in some treacherous terrain covered in thick growth and you have the ingredients for misdirection and disaster.

That, or maybe there really are evil robots trying to kill us.

Gabriel Rees is a Coeur d'Alene resident and a member of the Idaho Writers League.