Last year, I attended a CITO (as part of TXGA‘s CITO Across Texas) in a west Austin park I had never been to before. At the entrance to its trailhead there was a large stone structure, obviously something for holding a fire, but too large and oddly arranged to be the remains of a house (as far as I could tell. After all this time, I still know staggeringly little about basic architecture). I noted it and then completely forgot all about it as I carried on with life, the universe, and weightier issues on my mind at the time. A couple of days ago, two new caches dropped. I had no hope of getting FTF on either of them, but there was no reason I couldn’t grab one as my cache of the day. After I got off work, I pulled up one of the new caches, set my map to route me there (an astoundingly swift 12 minutes), and then set off. Imagine my surprise to pull into the same park and park in front of the same stone structure! The description of the cache explained that it used to be a lime foundry that was important to the economy of the city and fueled its expansion. There was a historical plaque onsite that explained that as well, but it was obscured behind leafy, low-hanging branches so I never saw it was there.
It never ceases to amaze me that there are still little corners of my city that I have never known about. I’ve lived in Austin most of my life, but I have seen more of its nooks and crannies since I started caching than my entire life before. And the thought extends both inward and outward: I had no interest in the surrounding communities around Austin before I found myself going to them for caches. From that first drive out to Cameron, I’ve seen things places only mentioned in my youth, and now I feel almost as if I know them (at least in relation to home). And, even farther, it’s become a chance to see my state, my country, my world. Now I get to drag my little girls around to see some of those places. I probably never would have taken them to Bay City or Gonzales to learn where half of their family are from. They would have never seen the Farley Boat Works. One of these days, I’ll take them out west so they can see where I fell in love with the stars or where their mother and I honeymooned all those years ago.
All that said, <dadjoke>orange you glad I didn’t do a deep dive on lime?</dadjoke>
Geocaching While Black 