The Thorn Birds

I parked on a neighborhood street by a neighborhood park to go get my daily cache. I bypassed another cache on the way because I saw in the last finder’s log that it involved a hundred-foot bushwhack to get to it and didn’t feel like getting that into things. I chose poorly.

After a walk along a trail worn into the grass, I broke off towards a patch of woods in the direction of my quarry. As soon as I stepped from the clear into the growth-line, I was flustered by the sudden flapping of all the birds I had disturbed. Apparently, they liked to hang out in there and I could immediately understand why: it was just thick enough to keep out all but the most determined intruders. Being one of those determined intruders, I managed to chase off at least a dozen pigeons, all taking to air with ease. That was a new one for me. And I continued into the wood. At a stone wall (it may have been natural, but I didn’t think so), I hit thorns. The thorn attribute had been on the cache page so I was prepared for it, but it felt like there was a light wall of pokey bull … crap waiting there for me. I slowly and gently began to push into it. I have no qualms about dealing with pokey bullcrap, but I do it slowly and methodically so as not to mess up clothes of puncture myself. I was also lucky in that I managed to find the perfect stick for moving things aside and because, in what has got to be a first for me, the Texas heat had managed to dry out enough of the thorny vines that they were easy to snap if need be. Not all of them, mind you, but enough that I was able to make headway. But with the tree cover, every time I had managed to traverse the thirty feet left to the cache, I needed another thirty feet in one direction or other. Once I spotted it about 60 feet away, I was able to speed myself a little more by taking a longer route around the rest of the thorns, into some easier forest. That wasn’t really possible before since I didn’t know where I was going, but I finally made an adjustment that got me to the cute little cache with a minimum of muss and/or fuss. Inveni, inscripsi, reposui. Once I was done, my goal was to get out of the wood with as few thorns as I could. As always, I had taken the hard way in but the easy way out. There was an almost defined path, at most light scrub covered, leading from GZ to the the trail I had started on, coming out about a hundred feet farther along than when I went in. I walked. I logged. I silently cursed my luck.

Not bad, all in all…