Interesting when I returned (with my wife) last summer for a nine day paddle on a canoe route in the Boundary Waters that I'd worked as a guide back in 1976 - only now we had a GPS unit with us.

Canoeing in the BWCA offers some pretty serious route-finding challenges, and I figured that as there were only two of us this time, and considering our ages (mid 60's), I'd take the GPS as a backup to my usual "dead reconning, wetted finger in the wind" approach, along with the usual map and compass.

Thing is...while there were several occasions on last summer's adventure when we found ourselves scratching our heads about our actual location - I could never bring myself to use that GPS unit. Just did not feel right somehow...not in a political sense - but that this device just feels so "disconnective" for me, and totally foreign to the otherwise completely engaging, primordial land and waterscapes through which we were paddling. I felt that using GPS would have compromised that engagement...much as using a digital camera compromises my engagement. Ha!