Over The River And Through The Woods…

A buddy called me on Saturday asking if I wanted to go cache. “Of course I do!” I replied. Required things for the day were done, and I sped off to the back end of the Barton Creek Greenbelt. He had solved a D3/T4 Unknown, and we were going for it. Coincidentally, I had also solved it at some point, but seeing that T4 might have discouraged me from going after it so long ago. Heck, had he not brought it up, I don’t know if I would have ever gone for it on my own. But lately, I’ve been thinking that I need to go after some more serious Terrains if for no other reason than to get a bit more exercise in the times we live in. I also don’t remember solving it, and in the regular app, I had nothing to indicate to me that I had done so. So kudos to Cachly for making it evident that I had.

The trails wound around some lovely sights of nature, but they also served as a reminder: there are some people who just will not care about effective social distancing. Sure, I went out with someone to go get this, but we had masks with us, kept a reasonable distance apart, and managed to give a decent berth to anyone we encountered. But hanging around swimming and partying in big groups? Not so much. Sure, it was a beautiful day, and sure sheltering restrictions have loosened, but something like this is really silly. And, on a much smaller note, it was a mar on the beautiful sounds of nature. Seriously, from a distance, this all sounded like a concert. Is this really the time, guys? We spent little time with them because we ended up climbing.

We climbed to a plateau at the three-quarters point up to grab a different cache that happened to be on the way, then crossed a rickety hillside bridge above the creek. It was high enough that we managed to leave the sounds of the concert below behind us and fill our ears with the wind moving through the cedars. We stopped a couple of times on the way up. I’ve never been the best climber to begin with, and since I haven’t been taking care of myself as well as I should during this “time of cholera,” I found myself pretty winded sometimes. Luckily, my company was kind enough to wait with me. He is definitely in better shape than I am. The shack was an unexpected find. I wouldn’t be amazed if it belonged to one of the Bartons all those years ago when this was their property, far outside the city limits. We eventually crested over the top of the hill to a lovely view, and my buddy ended up finding an ammo can stuck in a crevice, obscured by rocks. The contents were examined, the log was signed, and the can was returned. He ended up leaving a trackable that’s going to have a long sleep considering the last find on this one was two and a half years ago (talk about a lonely cache!).

We made our way back out of the greenbelt pretty much the same way we came in. We crossed knee-deep water (in water, the camera adds ten pounds and three inches; on land, it adds three inches and ten pounds). I slipped and fell in a mud puddle once on the way up and then twice in the same puddle on the way back, despite giving it the respect it had so obviously earned the first time around. My buddy managed to get whacked in the face by tree limbs a couple of times. We managed to avoid Bluetooth speaker­–wearing students and tattooed dog walkers on the path. There’s nothing wrong with having tattoos or walking dogs, but if you have to broadcast your music while you’re walking in the woods, well, all expletives aside, I don’t think I even want to know you. That’s not true. You’re probably OK, just horribly misguided.

All in all, I will call it successful. Oh, and sidenote: did I mention that my Sunday cache was my seven-hundredth day in a row? So I’ve got that going for me, too, which is nice.