Who Am I Kidding?

Yesterday, I got off work (as I do most weekdays) and needed a cache for the day. As you can imagine, after caching for 2,349 days in a row, I’ve found most of the low-hanging fruit in this county, and it’s not uncommon for me to pop over to a neighboring one if I’ve got time on my hands. In fact, if I didn’t live in such a cache-dense area, I would have never made it this far, but that’s not the point of any of this.

I needed a cache, so I decided to go after one that’s been sitting on my map for a while. It’s in a park about a five-minute drive from where I work, but it’s deep enough into that park that I had held off on it for quite a while. The summers have been far too hot to mess with it, but in the winters, I just never got around to it. However, a few days ago, the local weather finally truly shifted from annoyingly hot to protocold, so I finally decided to go after it. Now, I didn’t want to make the two-and-a-half-mile hike from the front of the park to the cache, especially now. For the last few months, I haven’t been getting out to the more remote caches, partially because of that annoying and, at times, blistering heat and partially because I just haven’t been in a mental state to hike. Consequently, I didn’t know if I was up for five miles of walking. Yes, I need to work on that, but that’s not the point of any of this, either.

Checking out a map of the park, I found a side entrance that would put me about 350 feet from the cache (or more like 750 if I took the paths around). That sounded much more comfortable. So, I drove over to the side entrance and went for a stroll. The sidewalk melded into the bike path, and the bike path turned to the left with a well-maintained dirt path going to the right. I followed the dirt path until I saw I was 70 feet from the cache. That’s when I noticed the faint geotrail, unintentionally marked by two piles of dog poop, turning off the path. The trees were denser than I had expected, and there were thorny plants all over the place. I paused for a minute with concern and thought.

Anyone who has ever met me will tell you I tend to dress well. You also know that geocaching and finery do not mix. I have started dressing down more as my caching career has continued, but I like to think I still cut a smart figure. I wasn’t exactly in a suit or anything (though I have cached in a couple of my suits and even in my tuxedo), but I’ve thought in the past about how caching has affected my clothing. I’ve put quite a bit of wear and tear on them, especially my pants (I almost exclusively wear slacks), to the point that I’ve designated certain items as “caching only.” And all that wear and tear has added up to a not-insignificant expense. Not as much as my various trips, mind you, but it has added up.

So I stood at the edge of that bit of wilderness and made some quick calculations. I could replace my cardigan in a few days if I needed to. I could replace my slacks in an hour. My shoes were pretty new, but I could easily replace them in a pinch. Mindful of the dog leavings, I stepped off the path with a thought in my head: “Who am I kidding? I can get more clothes.” I crunched through low stalks, drying out and soon to die in the oncoming cold. I shifted around tree limbs, taking care not to catch or impale myself on anything. And the thorny ones? I either stepped on them directly to bend them over or held them gingerly out of the way so that I wouldn’t poke myself or my clothes. (I only took one light thorn prick to the hand.) I made my way to a rock ledge that was elevated over the path, and under a pile of rocks, I found my cache.

I guess my point here (and I do have one) is that if a little damage to my sartorial splendor is the cost of hitting 2,350 days of caching in a row, then it’s obviously a cost I’m willing to pay.