Del Norte had another very western courthouse in a different way, combining the rough hewn look with classical revival. That seems in a contradiction, and it works well enough, but something is off about it for me. I like the rough hewn look and I like classical revival, but the combination of the two didn’t work for me in this case. It also got me thinking. I’d just started denoting a western-style courthouse at the beginning of this trip. Was I trying to denote the mixture of more rugged native materials used with more traditional or regimented forms? Or was there some other quality I had latched on to that I couldn’t quite put my finger on? The only thing I could be sure of was that I was probably overthinking it.
The cache was a keybox under a bench surrounding a small liberty tree. This particular tree was planted in memory of the events of September 11, 2001. It also wasn’t the best, either. My first thought was that the bench around the tree would one day cause troubles for the trunk. Sure, that wouldn’t be until years in the future, but I also can easily imagine that future courthouse groundsfolk will have far less consideration for it than might someone of today. The other problem was that the cache was unexpectedly full of water. I never think about a keybox needing to be watertight and when the sprinklers were watering the tree, the keybox was filling up and, being shaded underneath, received no sun to warm it and evaporate the water. I acknowledge the sentiment, but not the best location for a cache I’ve ever encountered. But it was, in fact, a cache, so I got on down the road again, driving through Wolf Creek Pass. This is where my distaste for passes began. Though the drive was beautiful, it was also harrowing. There were tunnels and gorgeous panoramas of valleys. There were also crazy grades that I couldn’t let myself go down too fast. It felt like it took forever, both because of the unfamiliar nature of the road and because my heightened sense of fear. Eventually, I made it back to flatter ground, not beginning to know that this would be one of the easier passes I would drive. I cruised along the last few miles and then finally came to a stop in…
Geocaching While Black 