Anticipation

While there’s a pleasant sense of “the thrill of the hunt” associated with going caching, there’s an added tingliness associated with hiding caches for other people to find. Over the last few days I’ve put together my ninth cache hide, and it’s a fun process.

There are decisions to be made about its purpose (a scenic view? a clever hide? a cunning puzzle? an educational experience?), a hiding place has to be located (the right size, a good spot, and unlikely to be stumbled across by “muggles” (non-cachers)), accurate coordinates need to be obtained (cachers hate dodgy coordinates), the container has to be organised (waterproof and suitably camouflaged), the swaps have to be purchased ($2 shops are a big help here), and the description for the cache page has to be written.

When I was about ready, I took the cache to its hiding place on my way home from work. It was getting late, but I just made it before it got too dark! Once I was home I uploaded the cache page.

It’s at this point—when you’ve done all the preparation and everything seems ready—that the anticipation really sets in. First you have to wait for the cache description to be approved by a reviewer; once this happens the cache page—giving the coordinates for the cache—is available for the whole world to see  … and you wait to see what happens.

Publication of the cache description sets in train a sequence of events you can’t predict.

In places you don’t know people you may not have met receive an email to say there’s a new cache, and then it’s a matter of how keen they are to go and find it … and how easy it is for them to get away and when. You never know who has been galvanised to action, or how many, or at what time, until the logs start to appear online.

The cache I just hid was a puzzle cache. This means I didn’t actually give any coordinates (well, not directly, anyway). All I wrote was the following haiku:
Gone is gloom: A cache
calls. Cheered, I seek plastic on
a tempting straight path.

I didn’t think this would be too hard for folks to solve … and it wasn’t. Four hours after the cache was “published” it had already been found by four teams, a couple within just a few minutes of each other. There’s often a bit of a race to be first-to-find, and so even though it was a weekday the fact that it’s school holiday time in Tassie meant that my sense of anticipation didn’t linger too long.

Well, that thrill has now been and gone!

No, that’s not true. There will be more finders, and I enjoy reading the logs as they come in over the next days, weeks and months. One of the fun things about caching is that complete strangers contribute to this crazy game by hiding and finding, and sharing their experience through their logs. It’s a peculiar kind of community … but I’m not going to sit here and over-analyse it, since I need to go and do some work. If no work, then no play: I want to go caching on Saturday.

Gotta love a never-ending sense of anticipation.