I have no intention to make enemies here, sorry if my statement ruffled feathers. The community has been very helpful. I purchased this based on the following statement:
The shield also has an on-board accelerometer, the LIS3DH. It's extremely low power so won't chew up your energy budget. The accel communicates over SPI, so it takes up A2, A3, A4, and A5 as marked on the silkscreen of the shield. A configurable interrupt from the LIS3DH is connected to the Electron's "wake" (WKP) pin, so you should be able to make a project where the Electron and GPS stay in deep sleep until it's hit hard enough to cross a threshold you set on the accelerometer.
However, based on numerous threads such as here (others are searchable) and looking at this github issue, it appears as though waking up via accelerometer doesn't work as reliably the document stated. If it doesn't work reliably, then it can't be trusted. And by not working reliably, it doesn't just ignore further accelerometer data and fails to wake on movement, but it also fails to wake based on timing or anything other than the RESET button. (Did I read the github issue wrong? I hope so, but don't think so.)
I'm going to keep trying to figure this out, but lots of smarter people before me apparently haven't been able to. So I don't have high expectations of success.