Hi! I’m Marcellus Cadd and I cache under the name Atreides! You may know me from such other media as GeocacheTalk, the Groundspeak Newsletter, and NPR! In 2018, I started geocaching. I quickly found myself drawn into the hidden world only geocachers access, a world of treasures and wonders that overlays the mundane world we all share (kind of like Harry Potter, but different?). Soon after, I began to write about the thoughts I had experienced while doing it. I’m not a journaler by nature, but once I started working on the Texas County Challenge, I decided to chronicle the places I was going.
Along the way, I’ve gone a lot of places, from the iconic cities of Texas, like Dallas, San Antonio, and Amarillo (my own home city, Austin, not least among them), to the tiny, out-of-the-way places you’ve never heard of, such as Paint Rock, Jefferson, and San Diego (no, not that San Diego). I’ve also seen a lot of wonderful caches in many amazing places, like La Casa de Azucar in El Paso, the Battleship Texas in Houston, and the grave of Sam Houston in Huntsville. Some caches have been really clever, others pretty simple, but all of them have been special in their own way.
After a year and a half, I signed the Texas County Challenge once I completed its task of finding a cache in all 254 counties. But where would I go from there? I set myself a new goal. There were 3,142 (now 3,144) counties (or county equivalents) in the United States, and I had only visited 8% of them. As long as there are counties (or county equivalents) I haven’t been to, and as long as I am able, I’m going to keep going until I’ve been to them all!
Another aspect of my geocaching travels (both literal and figurative) is equally as important as my goal. I am part of a very small segment of the geocaching population: cachers of color. Minority cachers are rare to begin with, with Black cachers making up only a sliver of a fraction of that segment. There are literally dozens of us! Geocaching is a colorblind activity, but we all know that the world isn’t. We’re here, though, and I hope that all my travels serve as both entertainment for everybody, regardless of who you are, and a testament for people who look more like me that geocaching and the outdoors are for everybody, us included.
At this point, I’ve been to hundreds more counties, completed several other State County Challenges, been interviewed by GeocacheTalk and Groundspeak, and been featured on NPR! When I have new counties to write about, I publish every weekday, and when I don’t, it’s every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. As long as I have new places to go, I’m going to keep on going! Come with me! Let’s go on an adventure!
Geocaching While Black 