Stumbling upon geocaching

By Marty Basch

It would have been nice to hear the dry rattling call of the belted kingfisher, as the sign said.Equally appreciated would have been the twang of the banjo string that would identify the green frog.A tree swallow could have flown over the bog.The noisy chatter of the eastern kingbird could have chased away the intruders.But even Mother Nature didnt heed the quiet sign in the grayness of a wet day surrounding the blind off a dirt road in the White Mountain National Forest.The cacophony of rain on wood was the only sound as the two mountain bikers waited for the downpour to pass, or at least abate.Then there was another sound.Whats up there?" asked Jan Duprey.A small plastic container was by one of the beams. Opening it up, we found items like a toy frog, feather, pencil, logbook, torn corner of a $20 bill and a note. The note informed us we had stumbled upon a geocache. Web site (www.geocaching.com) and e-mail addresses were part of the find and that led us to an outdoor adventure called geocaching.According to the site, geocaching is an adventure game for GPS users, the electronic device that uses longitude and latitude coordinates to determine your location. The basic idea is to have individuals and organizations set up caches all over the world and share the locations of these caches on the Internet, the site advises. GPS users can then use the location coordinates to find the caches. Once found, a cache may provide the visitor with a wide variety of rewards. All the visitor is asked to do is if they get something they should try to leave something for the cache. The e-mail address led us to the person who had left the cache behind. His name is Matt Harriman, a phone company employee, who lives in Fryeburg, Maine, not too far from where we found the loot.The great thing about caching is that it takes you places you may never know about, he wrote. Also, he pointed out, its a good family outing that can combine hiking and a sort of treasure hunt. When Harriman is out he usually takes his 21-month-old son with him in a pack on his back. His son is almost a veteran in this new millennium game, having been at it at least six months.He has been going with me since he was 15 months. He loves it, Harriman zapped through cyberspace.Harriman has placed geocaches in several places. He gets lots of emails from people who have found them and he also emails the people of the caches he has found.Players go to the web site and look for cache coordinates using zip code and area. Then outside you go with the GPS and map to look for them. The sites can be remote or they can literally be in someones backyard. Finding a cache could involve using various outdoor skills. A rock climber could put one on a ledge while a scuba diver might store one in the sea. The rules are really easy to follow: Take something from the cache. Leave something in the cache. Write about it in the logbook. Caches vary in size. There are those that just contain small items, like the ones we found, or they could be true treasures and have things like maps, books, money, jewelry or CDs. Its suggested to keep the cache waterproof and not to put in anything questionable or illegal like ammo, alcohol or drugs.Food is not a good idea. The local four-legged creatures have a tendency to chew through the containers.The highlight of caching that should be stressed is cache in, trash out, wrote Harriman. Most people into this are great about keeping trails litter free. If you see it, pick it up.For us, finding the cache was a bit like crashing a party. We saw all the items, placing them down on a shelve inside the blind. Though we did sign the logbook, actually a post-it pad, we didnt think it appropriate to take something since we werent part of the game.But in the spirit of fun, we did leave something behind. For some uncanny reason, between the two of us, we were able to scratch up a paper clip. Granted, its no treasure, but itll take some orienteering work to find it.That is, unless you stumble across the blind.Marty Basch can be reached at rodeman@aol.com.