Recently, I’ve been finding myself going after caches placed by newer cachers, and I’ve got to admit that I’ve been impressed. I’ve given out more favorite points in the last week than I have in a while. If you haven’t been following me for a long time, believe me when I tell you that is quite a thing. I’m notorious for stingily hoarding favorites. Why? Because I’m pretty blasé to begin with, and I rarely see caches that move me, although I also feel that each one is its own little adventure. But some of these newbies have been stepping up the game around here. I feel a little sad because I know the reason that these newer caches have been so cool. New cachers have more hope. I remember when I was brand spanking new to the caching game. I had so many ideas—things I wanted to do and clever ideas I wanted to try. My first cache was pretty standard, an LPC with a minor but hardly earthshaking twist. I’ve done other LPCs with similarly minor variations, but those have all gone by the wayside. Then I decided to go big with a series of six caches leading to a seventh and final, but that became a nightmare to maintain, partially since a couple of the hides turned out to be ill conceived. Only two of the series remain at this point. My most found caches have been my most boring. My most favorited cache, the 3D-printed puzzle box with three nested puzzles, needed constant replacement, and I just couldn’t keep up with it. I’ve got several interesting caches I am looking for the right place to hide, but I’m slowed down by the feeling that I don’t want to risk a bunch of work and effort disappearing in the blink of an eye (as it has before). Add to that things that don’t directly affect my ability to hide things: finding and logging a cache every day, writing (I’ve got to keep both myself and my ravenous readers happy), more experience with what does and doesn’t work from a container perspective … I find it harder to focus on what I’m going to hide, which is disrespectful to all the cachers who have hidden things for me to find.
But these new cachers? They’re just going for it! They get an idea, and they make the idea, and the torpedoes be damned! They have a kind of freedom that I’ve lost. They (probably) don’t know what does and doesn’t work, and since they have nothing inside them saying no, they have nothing to stop them from making something magical. Maybe it’ll fall into disrepair and become a burden. Maybe some muggle will have more fun destroying something than creating something. Maybe the environment will prove too much for it. But at least the magic will have been there for all of us to enjoy, even if only for a little while.
I think many of us started out as shapers and dreamers and makers. Some still manage it in one way or another. I wonder (or perhaps fear) that maybe I’m not anymore. I want to, but I need to recapture that primordial joy. Not just for caching, mind you; I still have that. I need to find that thing within me that can create again for others to enjoy. Sure, I create with my words, but a good cache is worth a thousand words, and a clever hide worth a hundred lines.
Geocaching While Black 