All Wet

As I walked up the park path, I thought a lot about Austin‘s history, specifically the Cedar Choppers who once roamed the outskirts of the city. Of course, in this day and age, the places they roamed are well within the city limits, and I knew that the trees I walked by were once part of their domains. I hardly have to tell you why I was there, but I will mention why I was there.

For the few of you who don’t know (some non-cachers might be reading this), there are nine Difficulty ratings and nine Terrain ratings for caches, resulting in 81 possible D/T combinations, and finding a complete round of combinations is referred to as a loop or Fizzy. Fun fact: they’re called Fizzies after an early cacher, fizzymagic, one of the first to focus on them. I’m not by nature a Fizzy chaser, though I know more than a few who are. However, I recently realized that I was only one cache away from completing another loop, and it didn’t require an especially rare-to-find D/T. I pulled up a map, filtered for that D/T, and took my pick of caches that would fit the bill, choosing one in a park I have mostly only visited to find caches.

At the end of the workday, I parked and considered my options. I could go the easy way, which would involve half a mile of walking along a well-defined path, or I could go the short way, which would involve fording a creek and a little bit of bushwhacking. This was funny because I had faced the same choice the day before when I went for my daily cache. I made the exact same choice both days: ford and bushwhack! For the record, I am making this sound far more adventurous than it actually was. At no point on either day did I have to face water deeper than my ankles or brush and branches that needed a machete or similar. Wet socks are annoying, but I have most certainly been through worse. Besides, the wet socks were the least of my wetness woes. You see, while it has been a cool spring here, it has recently gotten to temperatures more in line with Austin of the last decade. Soon after I hit the tree line, losing what little breeze there was, sweat began to pour from my pores. The mugginess from my proximity to the creek I had just crossed didn’t help things. I was constantly wiping sweat from my eyes as I was led to a crossroad and GZ. I was surrounded by mountain cedars (which are actually Ashe junipers, but whatever) and knew that: (a) the cache had been found two days before, (b) it was on the back of a many-branched tree, and (c) it was about two feet off the ground. A micro in a tree. How hard could it be? For me, nigh infinitely. I’m never the best at micros in trees. When I’m half blinded by the liquid issue of my brow? Even worse! I circled tree after tree, hoping to see something to give the cache away. I double-checked ground zero to make sure it had settled on one place (I’ve had it mislead me before, and trees can be a big cause of bouncing) and kept on searching. I was convinced that I had found the right tree, yet the low branches contained nothing.

Eventually, I opted to check the recent logs. Some of them had photos of what I was looking for, but one provided two more excellent tidbits of information: (d) the target tree had been damaged by our winter storms, and (e) it was at eye level now! That last bit was the key. It’s difficult to find a black cat in a dark room, especially when there is no cat. It’s also difficult to find something in your sight line when you’re only looking at knee level. And wouldn’t you know that the half-broken tree behind the tree I had been circling for what seemed like forever had a pill bottle hanging from it! My quarry had been found, and once it had been signed and logged, I was the proud bearer of loop fifteen. Go, me!