Sometimes I think to myself that I’ve gotten pretty good at this geocaching thing. And then other times are like yesterday.
So, I’m on my way home and I decide to stop off for a cache on the way (as I am apt to do). There was one in particular that I had been saving for just such an occasion: it was close to where I work and the D/T wasn’t remotely challenging, making it the perfect one for a short detour (I just wanted to get home). I pulled off into a familiar street in a familiar industrial area and came to a stop in the parking lot of an office park. I was also nagged by the knowledge that I had been there before decades ago for something but could not for the life of me remember what, but that’s neither here nor there. All that mattered was that there was a fence that had been there long enough that the bushes and trees had grown into the gaps. The first thing that caught my eye was some kind of heavy metal sticker on a fence post. It might have been Iron Maiden, but again neither here nor there. I considered for a moment that it might be a flat magnet (which I know is no longer allowed because it’s not actually a container, but they still crop up from time to time) and poked it. It wasn’t. That wasn’t surprising since there was a big bush right next to it and made for a more obvious hiding spot. I started moving its branches, looking at both them and the fencing behind in tandem. Nothing. There was a taller tree nearby, but I ruled that out (my quarry was at about chest level, and this tree’s canopy was above my head) so I began to examine a shorter tree. Again, no joy. I went back to the bush, assuming I had missed something, this time pulling out my grabber to more directly manipulate some of the deeper branches. I searched again in vain. Was it possible I had missed something in the low tree? It wasn’t at all dense with foliage, but I guess it was possible? I went back to it and took another look at it, getting the same result as before. I began to go back through the logs. I recognized several of the previous finders and knew their skills were pretty legit, but I saw at least one (dare I say it) casual cacher who managed to find it with his daughters, so it couldn’t be that hard, could it? Of course, I have seen so-called casuals find crazily difficult caches out of nowhere before (I’d done it before when I was more of a noob myself) so it was possible. Wheels within wheels began to turn behind my eyes as I considered the next move, especially since I assumed that that bush hid a secret I was ready to divine. Until I caught a flash of green, that is, brighter than the leaves and the other greenery. I reached out to it, behind that sticker, and there it was! COBRA!
I was worried before that I was turning into a grognard. Maybe I should try harder to not suck at geocaching so much!
