What Men Must Know

Earlier this week, I was lucky enough to be interviewed by a journalism student from the University of Texas at Austin about geocaching and some of my related antics. I talked about some of the places I’d been and some of the best caches I’d seen over the years. Toward the end, she mentioned that, as part of her research, she would soon be joining the rest of us in our distinguished club and hunting her first cache on her own. That was nice to hear; new blood is always welcome. But also, I became a little concerned. There are a good number of caches around the UT area that are good starter caches, but there are also a lot of difficult hides that might vex the new cacher. I had mentioned the secret of the lamppost hide, so I was confident that she would not be stumped over that as I was when I started, but I still fretted a little.

There’s a web comic short series I’ve enjoyed about a Boy Scouts–like group in a fantasy world that learns the dangers of their forest so that when they grow older, they can better defend their villages against threats. The group’s motto is “What men must know, a boy must learn.” Despite the fact that it sounds gender exclusive (there is a different group for the girls), the basic sentiment holds for us. What a cacher must know, a newbie must learn. I’m sure I’ve mentioned it before, but I feel Austin has a bit of a problem with that. There are a lot of very difficult hides sitting around the area. Heck, there are some FTFs that have been sitting unclaimed for weeks or even months because of an intentional escalation of difficulties to stump the local cachers who have seen everything. New cachers tend to hide simple caches for their first ones, but those hides usually don’t last. Even if they do, the newer cachers are rarely as prolific as the older cachers in the hide department. That means that it’s easy for an area to start off with lots of starter caches and, over time, become overrun by difficult ones, which may be good for experienced cachers, but presents a problem for new cachers. I can only imagine how many people have attempted their first cache, accidentally picked a D4/T3 because it was in their local park and they didn’t pay attention to the rating because they’re new, and then given up in frustration because they weren’t prepared (or even envisioning) to find a highly camouflaged cricket at a crazy (for a newbie) height in a tree. I guess my point here (and I do have one) is that when you get a chance, you should take some time to hide a pill bottle under a rock or a bison on a fence. No, they’re not the most challenging and fantastic hides, but we gotta think about the newbies. They can’t get hooked into our secret world if they can’t find that first cache.