Treasure on the Mountain - Part 2

"Searching is half the fun:
life is much more manageable when thought of
as a scavenger hunt as opposed to a surprise party."
~ Jimmy Buffett

Okay...the last two posts are more autumn related than Halloween per se....but I only promised to post in the general realm of those two subjects. And since I've been away for a week, it's the best I can do.

Now as I mentioned in the last post, my chitlins discovered a 'treasure chest' of sorts in a cave on the mountain, and insisted that I interrupt my much needed commune with Autumn to go check it out. Apparently, my son is the one who discovered it as he was climbing around on the mountain. He saw something tucked back in what appeared to be a small cave opening in the boulders. So he crawled back in there and pulled out what appeared to be an antique ammunition box perhaps? Not really sure how to describe the container other than it was yellow and rusty and looked like something my Grandpa would have had in his work shop.
So we eagerly open the box up with no regard to life and limb, should it have been some sort of explosive or snake infested booby trap. My son was hoping for gold and jewels of course....(well really, weren't we all?!) But at first we didn't understand what we were looking at. There were small spiral notebooks inside of plastic zip lock bags, pens and pencils, business cards and an assortment of small strange trinkets. We were wondering who put this stuff in this box, and why they had it hidden in the nooks and crannies of the boulders on the side of a mountain in Smuggler's Notch, Vermont.
So being the 'Curious Georges' that we be.....we opened the bags, removed the notebooks and looked inside. There were notes from all different people, one after the other. The oldest notes we found dated back to 2002 and the most current note had been inscribed on the very day we found it. So we started to read a few. And the first one I read made me very sad. It was written by a man and his wife who had gone hiking in Smuggs to commemorate the death of their daughter. They too had found this same box and added their message. We flipped through the books and saw a wide variety of passages from individuals, hiking groups, couples and families just like us. There would be days when no one had found the box, and days when apparently more than one person had found it.

Then we noticed a note in one of the plastic bags, so we took it out and read it. It explained that the box we had found was a 'GeoCache', put there by the Northern Explorers club or something like that. It said if you find the box, feel free to take something from it, but if you do, then please leave something in return. Or just sign the journals and kindly replace the box just where you found it. It had an email address....geocaching.com. So my husband used one of the pens, wrote the address on his hand, and I added our family's passage to the book. If you don't already know this about me....I apparently live in a parallel universe where I learn of things several months, to years AFTER, the rest of the world has already 'been there' and 'done that'! So of course we still had no idea what exactly we had found or why....but it seemed like a really cool thing to find nonetheless....whatever IT was. So we put it back nice and neat just where we found it. My son begged us to go back there a couple of days later so he could explore some more. So we did go back after the Great Pumpkin Boat Regatta on Sunday. And sure enough, one or two others had also found the box since we had. Fast forward to us coming home from vacation, and I remember the address and plug it into the computer. And lo and behold....GeoCaching is basically a real life treasure hunt game that began with the use of GPS devices in 2000, and is now found on every continent in the world. There are currently 1,547,128 million caches hidden throughout the world and over 5 million 'Cachers'! And chances are....there is one within a mile of your location RIGHT NOW, just waiting to be found! Really? Who knew? Well apparently 5 million other people knew....that's who! But not us....nope....we just stumbled upon this 'geocache' by sheer accident. We didn't use any GPS devices or iPhones....only the curiosity of a child exploring the side a mountain.

Turns out....there is an official name for people like us on the GeoCaching site....we are considered 'Muggles', as in the Harry Potter variety. GeoMuggles to be exact....those 'uninitiated' non-cachers who just accidentally stumble upon a 'cache' by accident. Cool! Although my son did try to claim that he used his innate 'Wizard' senses to find that box on the mountain. I of course didn't believe there to even be a real box up there when there was one....so who am I to argue against his claims of 'magical powers'?
So now....we are officially going to start doing some 'GeoCaching' as a family. Turns out you sign up for a free account and plug in your zip code or location....and a large list of GeoCaches all around you pop up. Then you use a GPS or a GeoCache App enabled iPhone and head out for the hunt. Some even have secret codes to break and things to collect in order to find the caches. My kids are ALL ABOUT doing stuff like that. And honestly....I am the first one to participate in Easter Egg hunting (I'm not ashamed to admit it), so this looks like fun to me. It's something to do if your bored and want to get outside. And what better time to do it than in the Fall! :o)