I celebrated April Fools’ Day by getting an early-month FTF. When I got the notification, I immediately recognized that it was in a part of town with more money and therefore fewer caches. I thought for a bit about whether I really wanted to get involved with that but decided that getting an FTF before other, more intrepid (and by that, I mean with more time on their hands) cachers got the chance to snag it out from under me. I popped over at lunchtime, and when I arrived, I recognized the location. It was a neighborhood park in a nice neighborhood, and the entire thing was filled with mothers (or nannies) and preschool children. It was also the site of a longtime cache I had never found after multiple attempts. The biggest reason I never found it is because I never wanted to do a thorough search because every time I went there, it was full of kids. Of course, I could have gone at night, but the last thing I wanted to do was search around under a bridge in the middle of a rich neighborhood at night. A simple flashlight beam in the park would probably have been enough to prompt a call to the cops from one of the houses, much less a random Black dude in a neighborhood where he doesn’t belong (I’m not rich, and I don’t live there, so they wouldn’t be entirely incorrect).
All that said, I sat in my car for a moment, looking at the bridge. I always thought it was a terrible spot to put a cache, but it was right there, and there would never be a good time for it, so I would probably never have a better time than that moment. I took a deep breath, got out of the car, and just did it. It was easy enough to find, and I had minimal muggle interaction outside of a toddler who smiled at me while her mom intently focused on her phone. I signed the fresh paper, unsullied by any other signatures, and put it back in its rock-covered bolt hole to be found by the next cacher to come along. Then I beat a hasty retreat to my car.
Sometimes, cache locations are going to get reused, whether I like the locations or not. I don’t like this one, both for being in a prominently wealthy (and thus more policed) area and for being placed so close to where children congregate. It feels like trouble waiting to happen. But at least I got an FTF out of it, and it’s not like I have to go back there anytime soon. I just hope nobody else has a problem there. Time will tell.
Geocaching While Black 