Optimistic Nihilism

Austin has mostly come out from its shell. The ice has cracked, the slush is receding. It’s safe enough to get back on the streets and cache again. The weather is projected to get up into more comfortable levels over he next week so it will present a chance to finally go after some of the caches that dropped before and during the freeze. I doubt FTFs will still be available, but who knows. Of course, I’ve already gotten one for the month of January and FTFs are not exactly something I consider my raison d’etre, so that thought in itself raises a question: why does it matter?

There are a lot of things I do when it comes to cache that I really don’t care or have to care about. FTFs for example… It feels nice that I have some, especially in multiple states, but they’re not something that defines or enhances my personal caching experience. I don’t get a special sense of accomplishment from beating everyone to a cache. All it really means is that at the right time I was free enough to go and get it. There’s a previously mentioned cacher who gets a lot of FTFs around here because he’s retired and an early riser. I used to beat him to things sometimes because I am night owl (though less of one than I once was) and would sometimes go after them late before I went to bed. But ultimately, they don’t really matter to me. Another example is my streak. I just started finding caches and a day turned into a week in a row, turned into a month, turned into a year. That was great for challenges, but otherwise what does it matter? And now here I am, over seven and a half years later, still going. The longest streak challenge I’ve seen (grandfathered now if it’s even still active since everything over 365 days is illegal now) was 1500 days, but I didn’t have a suitable vehicle to traverse the sands of Albuquerque at the time to go get it. But streaks don’t matter to me. I’ve been saying since I hit year four that I was going to give it up; I just don’t because I don’t know what I’d do with myself if I stopped doing this every day.

You may want to sit down for a moment because there’s a small chance that I’m about to blow your mind with my next admission. As you all know, I am currently attempting to cache in every county in the United States. And every time I go to a new county, I make a point of visiting the county courthouse (or equivalent administrative center because some places don’t have a county courthouse, others don’t have a county courthouse). But anyone who has been county caching knows full well that that’s entirely unnecessary. I only started doing it for two reasons. The first reason was because long before I ever started caching, I thought it was be interesting to visit every courthouse in Texas, but had no reason to do all that travel. Once I started working on the Texas County Challenge, it made perfect sense to add on a side goal. I mean, I was going to be there anyway, so why not? The second reason was less charitable. When I started, a Black person in a predominantly Caucasian hobby, I had a small voice in the back of my head telling me that if I claimed I went to this place or that place, I probably wouldn’t be believed. Some of you are probably denying the premise on its face, but a lot of you out there who are different from the people around you know that feeling of being questioned or given greater scrutiny because you don’t fit the mold. Whether my fear was grounded or not, I realized that nobody would question me if I provided proof that I had been somewhere, and what better proof of being in a county than a picture of the county courthouse? By the time I was done with Texas, I had disabused myself of that notion, but I am the kind of person who commits to the bit. By the time I had been to all 254 courthouses in Texas, I had a thing so I kept doing that thing. And the thing actually served me well. In all the counties I’ve officially been to (I don’t count one in Vermont, one in Rhode Island, and two in Arizona because, well, no courthouse), I’ve only failed in a county because of a border once because I go well into any county because courthouse. I also got to see some interesting stuff sometimes, too. But I know that it carries a cost. I consider time to be very valuable when I’m out on the road (I’m not rich, so I try to cram as much as I can every trip) and I know that going to the center of every county wastes time that could otherwise be spent traveling to new counties. I’d probably be at county one thousand already if I had just hopped across a county line, gotten the nearest cache, and continued on. I also know that when I travel with others, I slow them down. When I was up in the northeast with the TexaSix, I dragged some of them to places they didn’t have to go because I alone had a need and I don’t like doing that people, which is one of several reasons that I tend to be a lone wolf: I can’t inconvenience people when I’m alone.

There are a lot of things I don’t have to care about. But you know something? I don’t push myself or go out of my way to do so, but I still get FTFs. While I don’t actually care about it, I’ll hit 2800 days on my streak in a few weeks. And I’m going to keep going to courthouses. Why? None of that stuff really matters. All that matters is inveni, inscripsi, reposui. But if nothing matters, why not do something cool with it? I didn’t have to watch fireworks in Moab, or stare at the sea at the Portland Head Light. I didn’t have to worry about snow in Flagstaff or see squirrels in Marysville or evade police in Vienna. But I did. And why? Because I could. And that is reason enough.