It's Not Just About the Numbers

This year I found my 500^th geocache. Unlike many cachers, I didn’t choose a particular special cache for the milestone. In fact, due to miscounting, I achieved it one find sooner than I’d figured on. My milestone was a simple lock-n-lock that was part of a trail of similar hides. I’m pleased that it belonged to a first-time cache hider and was in one of my favorite local parks, but that was not planned, nor have any of my previous milestones been.

Milestone finds are special among geocachers. Each is featured on your geocaching.com profile, and there is a special commemorative geocoin-and-hat-pin set for 500 which I, of course, ordered right away and proudly have on display. Some other cachers, though, would wonder why it took me nearly three years to reach this milestone.

The reasons are many and complex. I guess the main one is, I approach geocaching like a fine wine to savor rather than raw liquor to get drunk on as fast as possible. I’ll take quality over quantity, thank you. That doesn’t mean I’m above park-and-grabs… I love them, especially when I’m travelling or in an area for some other purpose than caching. Since I don’t have a Smartphone, it’s not easy to cache spontaneously, but when I find Wifi and locate an unknown cache in my vicinity then track it down, it’s a special find. That elevates a skirt-lifter or guard rail clinger to a quality cache to me. It is a bit of a challenge for someone without the instant access of a Smartphone, as well as an unexpected pleasure on a day devoted to other things.

Living far out in an unpopulated area, mostly public forests, caches of any kind are few and driving distances are long. It’s environmentally responsible and also saves me money if I devote entire days to geocaching, pre-load my GPS for an area, and drive there. Therefore ‘streaks’ of any length are not something I normally strive for. When I do take a caching day, the amount of driving time between caches still limits how many can be done in a day, and rural caches also usually involve hiking and/or climbing. A reasonable number to expect on a normal day in this area would be four to six finds. I’m happy with that. I’d rather enjoy a few caches, looking at the scenery, wildlife-watching, taking a few photos, and generally having the kind of adventure that makes a good found log.

There are those that do power trails (I’ve done the four relatively short ones locally) and rack up huge find counts in a fairly short time. I feel that newbies that do this are missing the learning experience of really understanding what geocaching is, how it works, and all it has to offer. Some of them may have found over 1,000 caches in a very short time (it’s possible to do in a couple of days), but what do they actually know about the game? Do they understand swag trading etiquette, how and why to write a great find log, what trackables are and how to deal with them, or even something as simple as how to reassemble a microcache and place it exactly where it was? I’ve heard some of the damnedest crazy-newbie stories and not all of those people by any means had single-digit find counts. Yes, we’ve all been there and I’m not dissing beginners… welcome, and have fun! But there will and should be a learning curve. (My first skirt lifter took me twenty minutes to find. You mean those things slide up?!?)

Another reason my find count isn’t higher than it is, is that the way I most enjoy caching is with a partner. My most frequent caching partner is my housemate Maggic. Since she badly broke a shoulder, our caching excursions are a lot less frequent that they once were. She is timid, often in pain, and tires easily. Neither one of us is under 60 and are far from the boldest cachers around anyway. I do go out on my own but prefer her company, for my own safety among other good reasons. Living in forested mountains in a snow zone, we also do little caching in winter.

Lastly, there are many geocachers that, for one reason or another, devote the major share of their caching energy to other aspects of the game. I am a caching socialite and evangelist; I attend (or host) a good many events. I also run geocaching programs for local festivals, kids’ organizations, the local library, and the like. This usually involves a lot of preparation, laying a temporary trail of waypoint hides, providing prizes, printing information sheets, and toting along my computer to demonstrate how the geocaching.com website works. This kind of outreach is important, not just to recruit new cachers, but to give geocaching a positive public image in the community. This makes it easier to get permission for a hide, makes caching events welcome activities in parks and towns, and informs the police exactly what those suspicious-looking individuals clutching GPS or Smartphone are doing in the shrubbery. In addition, I’m increasingly interested in hiding my own caches. This can become an absorbing, creative, and time-consuming hobby in itself.

I’m in no particular hurry to reach milestone 1,000. It may well take even longer than the first five hundred did. When I do, I’ll celebrate and take pride in the achievement. More importantly, I’ll know a lot more about geocaching than I know now, and will have had the kind of experiences that I’ll be telling tales about for the rest of my life.

Alas, Poor Bus!

            When I first saw the Bus, instantly a fantasy popped into my mind. I saw it, much younger, brightly painted with flowers and peace signs, bouncing down the road from Cherry Springs. Rock music pours from open windows… King Crimson or The Who… and the sweetish aroma of marijuana mingles with the exhaust smoke in its wake. Suddenly the bus coughs, sputters, and the engine dies. It keeps coasting down the hill, until the driver notices a dirt road on the right and a grassy spot on the corner and steers the bus to a safe halt there.

            “Hey man, what’s up?”

            “I think we’re out of gas.”

            “Bummer.”

            “It’s pretty here.” A girl with long hair and a billowy skirt floats down the bus steps and whirls around on the lawn. “Why don’t we just stay?”

            “We could homestead here,” another girl says dreamily. “Like a commune. We could live off the land and be organic. Hey, is there any of that pizza left?”

            “Yeah.” An arm passes a slice out a window.

            “I think we’re meant to be here,” the first girl says. “The bus stopped, like karma, man.”

            Two bearded guys come out. One gathers rocks for a fire ring, one waves the girls along as they collect firewood. Shortly they’re lying around a campfire, passing a wineskin, playing guitar, and nibbling pizza. “We’ll live in the Bus. It’ll be groovy.”

            I felt a very real connection to these people from the depths of my imagination, born the instant I saw the rusty, whitewashed old bus with its rickety attached plywood side room. Of the many RVs, shacks, and eccentrically-built camp buildings in the area, the Bus captured my imagination, and that of any other visitors that rounded the curve of the road from Galeton to Cherry Springs and saw it on its grassy corner. Six miles from anywhere in either direction, it was a landmark for decades. A photographer did a photostudy of it; his research showed it was some very rare model of bus from the late 30’s or early 40’s, and his beautiful photos were snapped up by collectors.

            That is why the community reacted with horror when the latest owners of that property demolished the plywood shack and began dismantling the bus itself! Car traffic increased because people drove by just to look at the slowly-filling dumpster as the bus disappeared, back to front, a little at a time. We mourned. This was a piece of Potter County history (or possibly Potter County fantasy) vanishing as we watched. Personally, I felt like I was losing the connection with my own hippie roots, although I’ll be the first to say my theory about the Bus’s origins is completely out of my fertile imagination. But I was not alone in my grief. The loss of this venerable landmark was the hot topic of gossip in Galeton’s cafés and taprooms all summer.

            When nothing was left of the Bus except the cab, the dumpster vanished. A month later, a pre-fab white aluminum structure, like a very large shed without windows, appeared where the passenger section of the bus and the side-room used to be. The gutted cab sits a yard from one wall, looking forlorn. It appears to be turning its back on the characterless aluminum monstrosity behind it. In shock after its massive passenger-section amputation, its windshield has the vacant, blank look of a skull’s eyes. Where have the dreams gone?

            Yet, as sad and pathetic as the Bus’s skull is, I hope the landowners have plans to restore and preserve it somehow. Will they connect it to the aluminum shed in the spring? Will it get new window glass, a cheery paint job? This may not revive the old Bus’s soul, but it would at least keep the memory of a long-time Potter County landmark alive. The era that brought the Bus here is long gone, but it’s worth remembering.