If I’ve learned one thing in life, it’s that it doesn’t matter where you came from. What matters is how you’re going to get back to civilization before you starve to death.

Some people get so hung up on superficialities and categories. What language you speak. What color your skin is. What degrees you’ve earned. What prisons you’ve done time in. See, what they don’t realize is, none of that matters when you’ve been wandering the thickly forested hills for days without food or shelter.

That’s why I’m glad the Bushnell ONIX 400 GPS is no respecter of creeds or credentials. All it cares about is mapping your surroundings with georeferenced satellite images, so you can find your way by comparing what you see around you with what you see on the screen. Along with topographical maps and a compass, the ONIX 400 also displays NEXRAD weather data for your location. And it picks up XM Satellite Radio, so you can keep up with Oprah Radio while you’re prying bark off of dead trees in search of edible grubs (XM member account and edible grubs sold separately).

Why was I put on this Earth? How can I live harmoniously with my fellow man? Didn’t I cross this same creek sometime yesterday? Will this fungus kill me if I eat it? You won’t find the answers to life’s questions on some car-centric GPS unit with simplistic, abstract road maps. And you won’t find them with the Bushnell ONIX 400 GPS, either. But you will find accurate visual images of wherever your happen to be on life’s path – even if you lost track of life’s path three days ago.

I sure wish I’d brought an ONIX 400 along instead of that Travel Connect Four game. But I don’t live in Woulda-Coulda-Shouldaville. As the great Katherine Mansfield once said, “Regret is an appalling waste of energy; you can’t build on it; it’s only for smearing inside your cosmic nostrils like a rotten ape pudding flag of degenerate basement hypodermic.”

Then again, that could be the fungus talking.

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