Pattern Recognition

I have lived most of my life in Austin and I have seen it constantly changing since I was old enough to know that places change. It is frequently joked that everyone who lives here says that you should’ve seen the city five years before whenever you got here if you wanted to see the best Austin. I have no doubt that there is some 90-year-old grognard, who thinks that the entire town started going downhill the second they finished Mansfield Dam. Some of the change has been annoying as all get out, but not all of it has. That’s what I was thinking as I pulled into the parking lot of the current Central Library. It is a vast improvement over the old one and one of the jewels of the city if you want my opinion. But I wasn’t there for the library. I was actually here for the short term (and more importantly) free parking. I decided to go after one of the many new caches that have cropped up downtown, this one in a secretive spot supposedly of great beauty. I can’t say for certain if that is true or not because I found it neither secret (since it was along a well defined and traveled trail) nor overwhelmingly scenic (though it did have some nice greenery and a decent view). As I walked, I remembered how the development I was in had once been the city power plant and the surrounding buildings had all been warehouses. Now, young people jogged with their dogs, perhaps from their apartments to some of the nearby restaurants or the high-end shopping locations or down to the more substantial trails along the river. That was immaterial though. The cache, as one might say on Talk Like Shakespeare Day, was the thing.

Had I taken a moment to read the hint before I got to it, I’m not 100% sure I would’ve gone for this cache. As I walked to it, I suspected its nature. Once I arrived, it turned out I was entirely correct. I was looking for a fake rock in a field of rocks. Is there any more annoying type of hide? Or am I especially jaded by such similar hides from another local cacher? It didn’t matter. The rock stood out to me like a sore thumb (in a field of thumbs no less). I have found enough fake rocks that I immediately recognize the standard ones available for purchase (ones custom made are much more difficult, but that’s an issue for another time). That was the good news. The bad news? In a first for me, it had dog poop on it. Not a ton, but enough that scraping was required. Normally, I would have pulled out the wipes and taken care of it, but I inadvertently left them back in the car. But one was not going to let that deter one from a cache was it? I scraped and then, careful not to touch the Yuck Zone, opened it to reveal the log within. I raised an eyebrow to see that it had been found the day before but not yet logged. Unless I’m doing some kind of power trail or geoart with friends, I log everything as I go so it always amazes me when someone doesn’t log a find. I shouldn’t be so surprised though. While my older daughter logs everything, my younger daughter often can’t be bothered with it. But that’s a musing for another time. Inveni, inscripsi, reposui. And, just like that, my goal was accomplished for the day. I walked back through that piece of my city that was once industrial and is now friendly (sort of), wondering what it will be in years hence. By the time I’m a 90-year-old grognard, it’ll probably be rundown and slummy. These things are always cyclical, you know?