I am not even sure if this column is reaching you. I think I am somewhere east of Big Bend National Park. For certain there is not another soul around for miles. I see lots of trees and lots of dark. The fear is starting to set in, and I am getting dizzy from lack of food and Big Red.

I have been lost for an hour, maybe longer. If help does not come soon, I will have to wait longer.

Most people might panic in this situation. But I have succumbed to the will of “Man vs. Wild” on The Discovery Channel, so worry, like the wind, passes.

 “Man vs. Wild” is a how-to survival guide show where host Bear Grylls takes viewers on a round robin of survival scenarios that pit one man against certain discomfort.

Guys, under no circumstances should you let your girlfriends or wives watch this show. Because Grylls is the epitome of how a male should be. He's what all males daydream about becoming while sitting at bars developing beer guts. Get this: Dude knows how to cook and eat an entire meal out of some tree grubs, pinecones and seawater.

While some guys beam with accomplishment at the prospect of having successfully trimmed our toenails, Grylls just fought off a bear with a pocketknife and his shoelaces. Seriously, my ability to burp the alphabet and recite “Star Wars” dialogue line for line pales to Grylls' uncanny proficiency at finding solutions to any problem.

Each episode features the former British Special Forces survival expert getting tossed out of a helicopter or plane into the most undesirable locations on the planet to show us how to survive.

How hardcore is this guy, you ask? Get this episode where he's lost in the freaking desert: Grylls, after walking miles in the punishing sun, becomes concerned about his temperature. To keep heat exhaustion at bay, he pees on his shirt and wraps it around his head. Intriguing, but how bad can heat stroke be?

He's eaten live snakes and fish, scavenged a zebra kill, and I think I even saw him make fire from ice and water.

As for my lost situation, turns out I was just somewhere in Helotes. See, I was on my way home from a vicious night of D&D role-playing and turned off the highway to keep heat exhaustion at bay.

And as is my wont, somewhere during the zip down and zip up, I wandered off. Maybe it was the massive amounts of Mountain Dew mixed with prescription Flintstones vitamins, but I thought I saw a Beholder and went to investigate.

Alas, no Beholder, just a trash bag full of Alf Pogs. Which is good because if I actually had stumbled across a full-grown Beholder, in the dark, on a lonely Texas highway, on the Far West Side of San Antonio ..... let's not go there.