These Are The Times

Which times are these? The ones that try men’s souls.

So, I was looking for a daily cache as I am wont to do. I had a couple of hours between one thing and another, and I figured I could grab a quick cache, get some dinner, and then go about with my plans. My closest cache was a simple one in a tree stump behind a nearby church. It was even found by friends last week. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy, right? Wrong. When I arrived, there was no sign of it. I phoned a friend just in case it was cleverer than I expected, but there was no answer. I gave it another look but decided to let it go. I didn’t want to spend too much time looking for something so simple. Besides, scofflaw that I am, I was technically trespassing in that I was parked on their grass, and the tree trunk I had been searching sported a “No Parking” sign. Besides, I was starting to get hungry, so I chose to play through and find something so I could eat soon. My next closest cache was one owned by my traveling buddy, Buckandi. He placed a series of interesting containers a while back (I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned them before). I’ve found about half of them, so I decided to go for it. Boy, was that a mistake. After a passable search, I came up empty handed. Based on the logs, I was 98 percent certain it was in a hollow in a stone wall, but the same logs also convinced me that it could be covered by arboreal detritus. I didn’t feel up to the task of removing the leaf piles and doing more searching. It was a little warm—enough to get me sweating a bit, which I was trying to avoid because I had a thing in a little while, remember? I decided to try another of Buckandi‘s caches and came up with a third goose egg. I thought it was something hidden on a telephone pole, but I didn’t do a great search because my focus was starting to wane. This entire cache-failure exercise was wearing me out. But I toughed it out and gave it one final shot.

I looked at the map and found one I thought might be more suitable. It was a simple Traditional hidden by a newer cacher a month before. It was far enough out that not many folks had found it but near enough that it wouldn’t make for a long journey. My first sign that it was going to be annoying was that it was near the front of a seemingly affluent neighborhood. I always narrow my eyes when a cache is surrounded by too many nice houses. It seemed like this one was in a pocket park, but with its position near the front of the subdivision, there was no place to park that wouldn’t block traffic trying to leave. Eventually, I was led to a road behind the cache, but it turned out to be a private road between upscale duplexes. That’s a big negative, Ghost Rider. I did get a bit of a break, though. A footpath alongside the private road led into the back of the park. I was able to park (legally, this time) nearby and walk the path. The path ended at the back of the park, but the cache was really along the entrance road. I walked further along the sidewalk to a niche in the subdivision wall where electrical equipment was hidden by trees. I looked at the ground and saw all the rocks. I felt a sinking feeling in my stomach. I looked at the cache name (Stone Stash) and read the description (“one of these things is not like the other”). I was hungry, sweaty, tired, and annoyed. There is a word in English for my feeling at that moment: stabby. A rock in a rock pile? Haven’t I outgrown those? They’re never all that good, or at least I’ve never seen a good one. A cache is a cache is a cache, but come on! But I was down to my last thirty minutes before I had somewhere to be, and I didn’t have time to go for another cache. I resisted the urge to chuck it all and got in there to search. I thought like a newbie. They would want to find it easily if needed, so it probably wouldn’t be in the middle of things. I spent most of my search looking near the bases of the trees and along the wall. I finally found it at the base of the wall, placed inside an angle. The rock was obviously fake, so much so that I almost didn’t see it because I was looking for a standard fake rock. Inveni, inscripsi, reposui.

As you have probably gathered, I am quite fond of caching. In my life, there are only a few things more important to me (my daughters being the two biggest ones). But you know what? Some days, I’m worn out by it. I’m glad that a new cacher has finally made their first hide, but I did not need another uninspired cache. But ultimately, it’s not their fault. There was nothing wrong with it that couldn’t be fixed by me having a snack.