As my workday came to a close, I pulled out my phone and looked for a cache. It was hot and muggy as all get out, so I didn’t want something that was going to have me searching forever under the Texas sun. Low-hanging fruit has been fairly scarce for me lately. I’ve found so many here that it’s not uncommon for me to run over to neighboring towns for a non-insane Difficulty cache. I managed to find something fairly easy on the edge of neighboring Cedar Park, then filled up my water bottle, and then went for a drive. I went west on a road I’ve been traveling since before I could drive and kept going beyond the streets I knew of old. Eventually, I came to a familiar turnoff and turned into a familiar park. For all my skills in map reading, I didn’t know where I was going until I got there. I parked over by the skate park (close to the beginning of the disc golf course), did a little walking in the woods, and found a bison tube waiting for me. What threw me was that I had been to this park tons of times for one reason or another. How had I never noticed this fifteen-year-old cache there before? I could understand if it had been there for a month or two. But I know I’ve found caches in the park and, in at least one case, failed miserably to find a cache there and had to completely redeploy for another one. Am I so blind that I never saw this one on the map? Apparently, the answer is yes.
I should be driving downtown for some simple caches. A cacher who lives south of Austin has been filling up spaces along Town Lake with new caches for a while. But that involves driving down the center of town. I sometimes note with a grimace that I’d rather drive to another town than cross through my own city. That’s part of the reason that Buda and Kyle have so many possibilities for me. I feel like I’ve picked over a lot of hunting grounds but have left just as many untouched. I get why I don’t go to Kyle that often: if I’ve gone that far, I might as well go all the way to San Marcos. Yet, I don’t find myself going out to Hornsby Bend or Bee Cave or Oak Hill that often, even though they’re not much farther than Cedar Park or Elgin. Why does the specter of traffic and distance keep me from some places but not away from others that are realistically just as difficult? Sometimes, I think I’ve grown complacent. I remember earlier times when I would be all over town looking for caches. Lately, I’ve been sticking to convenient locations. I’m shooting out to places that are easy to get to from work or home these days, not out to where there are caches to find. Maybe I need to start reconsidering that. Maybe I need to start looking at the map with fresh eyes, figure out some way to shake off my preconceptions, and start getting away from old patterns. When you’ve got blinders on, it’s harder to see something new. And I very much think that’s what I need.
Geocaching While Black 