Cache On!

Being the nostalgic person I am I often read back over my past logs and caches as a way to take a short trip down memory lane. Like a photo album only with words, the logs paint a picture of, not only the find, but at what place I may have been in my life at the time.

I see logs of caches I don’t remember until I read all the way through and think, “oh yes, that was just after I bought my first truck” or remember having an argument with my spouse and needing some me time. There’s the 5/5 my best friend and I found for my birthday or the cache I dropped my first trackable into.

Caching takes us to many places we would have never gone or even known about had it not been for a fellow cacher. Whether we use it as an excuse to get outside, for exercise or for the simple enjoyment of finding Tupperware in the woods, every cache creates a memory.

One such day that stands out was my first trip to Garden Creek Conservation Area. I was finding caches at the top of the valley when I wandered to what puppet48 calls “The Secret Passage”. Upon approach I noticed how thick the vegetation became, to the point of almost walking off a 40 foot cliff! I peered over the edge which turned out to be an incredible overhang down into a valley which could have been used for the back drop to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Lost World”. I was so taken by the view I almost didn’t notice the passage.

Created by a large slab of rock laying over a granite slope of sorts, it forms what appears to be a cave the quite literally allows you to descend into the valley through a “doorway” I slid down through the passage and was awe struck by the size of the rock wall the forms the valley. With the caches locked and loaded I headed off to explore the valley thinking all the time I should have brought someone else to enjoy this with me.

I’m sure we could all fill pages upon pages with stories such as this with the grander multiplied ten fold. From traveling the world to finding a new trail in our back yard it’s not only the memories of the cache that stay with us but the people with which we enjoy it. I cached through breakups, heartache, happiness, health issues and recovery. Every cache log gives me a snapshot as to who I was when I found it, and with over two and a half million caches world wide, there are a whole lot more memories to create. Cache on!