Friday, April 22, 2005
Geocaching in Spring
Nothing is so beautiful as Spring -
When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;
Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush
Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring
The ear it strikes like lightning to hear him sing.
So begins Gerald Manley Hopkin’s poem about the green promise of spring. Hopkins reads the natural cycle of growth and rebuilding as an emblem of the possibility for human renewal.
Inspired by the birdsong rinsing and wringing through our backyard, last weekend, we took a trip out to local woodlands to view the early trilliums. At least, that was our cover story. In fact, we’d been invited on a geocaching expedition by friends with walkie-talkies, a GPS unit and two enthusiastic children.
Geocaching is like an elaborate scavenger hunt, played with people whom you never meet, mediated by the internet. Here’s how it works. Someone hides a “cache,” a watertight container holding a logbook and maybe some small gifts, in a discreet hiding place, like under a park bench. That person records the location of the cache on a website, using a global positioning unit to give accurate coordinates. Someone setting out on a geocaching expedition logs on to the website and downloads information about geocaches hidden in the area they are visiting. And the fun begins.
As we drove out of town, our two-car convoy kept in touch by walkie-talkie. “Geocache three miles straight ahead as the crow flies,” our CB buddy reported, “Five caches registered with clues.” “So, what happens if you find something?” I asked. “The kids will show you,” our friend replied.
It was a beautiful afternoon for an adventure: the woods were spangled with white and yellow spring blooms. Our party wandered along, pausing to announce the return of favorite flowers; “Over there, a whole clump of rue anemone! There’s toothwort, and there’s dutchmen’s breeches!” Lured by the promise of hidden treasure, the children walked along cheerfully, more and more excited as the GPS showed us we were getting closer.
“We’re ten feet away and the clue says to look for a tree stump.” One of the girls squealed, “I’ve found it! It’s a round box! And there’s a mouse!” Sure enough, there was a circular cake tin hidden in a hollow stump under some leaves. A tiny, perturbed mouse dove into the depths, as we lifted the roof off her house.
Inside the box was a tiny pencil and a book where the girls logged their visit. And, too, there were modest treasures: a sparkly bracelet, some stickers. The girls carefully chose a prize then dropped in two of the tiny gifts they had brought for the next visitors to find. They put the cake-tin back in the tree-stump and covered it with a new layer of leaf-litter.
By the end of the day, the girls had thus traded gifts three times with anonymous fellow geocachers. A bit like public radio, it’s a game regulated by a sense of fair play and trust in the good will of unknown others with common interests. Those who set up a particular cache are charged with placing it responsibly, so they don’t damage the environment nor encourage those seeking it to spoil the landscape. Those who visit caches are expected in turn to help maintain the cache and its secrets.
The internet has created communities online, with venues where people “meet” in virtual coffee houses to make friends and solve problems. Combined with the technology of satellites and portable GPS unites. It has also cast a web over the physical landscape, built out of bytes and clues, laptops, pencil-stubs and personal trust.
If you’d like to try out geocaching, Elkhart County Parks is celebration Earth Day this weekend with a program at Bonneyville Mill County Park. You can find more information at http://www.geocaching.com.