This past summer, as my family camped outside Concord, Mass., as part of my home office adventure called Home Office Highway.com, I sauntered into a great wood. I was seeking the spirit of Henry David Thoreau. I was looking for peace and solitude among the evergreens and the crickets.
And I became lost.
I’d ventured off the beaten path onto a road less traveled. And for good reason. As dusk grew dark, it gets freakin’ scary in deep woods unknown. And that’s exactly where I found myself — without a Bushnell BackTrack personal GPS nativation system, locator and compass ($73).
This is a pretty cool device. About the size of a circular stopwatch, the BackTrack uses global positioning satellite technology to “mark” a location so the user can eventually find his way back (I don’t say “her” way back here because, as we all know, women would be smart enough to ask for directions). Women also would be smart enough to put in the two AAA batteries (guys would’ve assumed they were included — which they’re not).
So what I would have done that (almost) fateful eve in Concord is “mark” my location at our RV in the Minuteman RV Park, and then venture off willy nilly, without regard for geography or location. A small triangle locator would have pointed my way back again to the RV, and given me the distance in miles or feet,
With the BackTrack, I could have stored up to three locations (like the RV, the latrine and the canteen, for example) — or more pedestrian locations like my car in a massive parking lot. I turn on the device, “mark” the spot, and then turn it off. When I’m ready to walk back to my car — or find my way back to the RV Home Office, I just turn it on and it’ll show the direction and distance, even in the rain.
The BackTrack is like a traditional GPS in that it uses satellites to show your way. But it offers no maps or turn-by-turn directions spoken by in the voice of some snooty British woman who’s obviously still miffed at what transpired in and around Concord back in the 1700s.