I don’t wanna grow up, I’m a geocache kid!
    Somewhere, sometime, long long ago, my childhood ended. Not abruptly,  but over time, the sense of wonder at the world, the imagination and the dreams slowly faded away, covered over by layers of stresses and strains of daily life. Parenthood, a divorce, unfulfilling jobs and other of life’s dramas took center stage and relegated the child I was into the shadows of the wings, remembered as a supporting character on occasion, but never brought into the limelight.
    Life kept changing, a new wife, a steady fulfilling job, her children moving out and a pair of happy every other weekend, empty nesters had time on their hands. Fishing filled some of that time and we both enjoyed those peaceful moments at the lake we spent together, even if one of us wouldn’t bait her own hook. We tried to share this time with my younger children, but it was too boring for them and fish stink and lines get tangled and Nintendo’s got more attention than the twitching tip of a fishing rod.
    One day she came home from the local library, face beaming excitement as she told of the activity they had just done. You use satellites and a receiver to find things, little treasures, cleverly hidden so most people would never notice they even existed.  You follow an arrow until it says you are close then you look very carefully to find the cache. I was told I would have to get my own receiver too because she wasn’t gonna share. Since we had recently started buying collectible cats on e-bay, we looked for gps auctions and soon had a yellow Etrex in hand shortly followed by another. She was serious about not sharing. We began seeking the nearby caches listed on geocaching.com and discovered neat little areas in our own neighborhood we had not seen before. Although a few stumped us for quite awhile we enjoyed the challenge and eventually made the find, even if it took a few visits.  We were enjoying ourselves and our time together on this new activity. We took my children out a few times but they never quite ‘got’ it the way we had. That's ok, it's our activity.
   We began to hide a few caches, fun, creative little ones that people seemed to enjoy and even laugh when they were found and the description finally made sense.
   We planned trips to nearby towns with the only goal being to discover what other cachers wanted to share that was special and unique about their area. And we found little travelers, toys and treasures on a mission to visit faraway places and we could help them along and follow as they visited places we would probably never see. And we enjoyed the wit and humor that some of these travelers and caches exhibited.
  We stocked up on swag and even began filling a treasure chest with all of the trinkets we traded for. We never traded away swag we had got from a cache; it all went into our chest to become a tangible memory of how and when we came by each piece.
   We talked of caches we had done, caches we wanted to do, ideas for containers. We went to events and met other cachers. We planned more trips, more discoveries and more explorations. We sought more knowledge about the activity and began to frequent the forums gaining insights, entertainment and friends from around the globe.

    We worked together, each with their own jobs but with the same goals achieved as part of that team.  Best friends. Caching buddies. Out to explore the world together in a grand series of adventures one cache at a time.
   Childhood is even better the second time around. I can't wait to retire and play on the geo playground all the time... with my best friend!

By catsnfish

A couple of empty-nesters who caught the caching bug not realizing it was incurable. So if we’re found in the woods waltzing with Garmins, lifting lampskirts while tying our shoe or looking for “gum” underneath benches, be sure to stay away... it’s contagious and the only temporary relief can be found in finding bison’s, ammo’s, nano’s, or passing coins and spreading travel bugs!

Publisher's Note: Catsnfish write the periodic column The Adventures of Catsnfish. Subscribe (free) to The Online Geocacher to get an email alert when a new article is published.

Comments(1):

1. what a great story..

   God bless you guys .. what a great story .. hope we meet some day ..

   Wednesday, February 09, 2011 Curtis