Perhaps the heats of summer are to blame, those fevers brought on by rising temperatures and seasonal hormonal fluxes, for in the last several months, your correspondent has noticed a growing incidence of road rage to a point that makes me a bit afraid to drive in town. Admittedly, I am a little old lady used to driving country roads where the center line is used in alignment with the hood ornament to keep you on a true course, but in town, I stay to my own lane, heed signs, offer courtesies and generally cannot be faulted for my skill behind the wheel. Nevertheless, for any out-of-towner, there are such pitfalls as abruptly terminating lanes to take one by surprise, but most native drivers make allowances for the momentarily confused pilot who happens to find themselves in the wrong place at an inopportune moment.

I found myself in such a situation a month or so ago. I came over the rise in the rightmost lane, intending to go straight through the traffic light, only to discover that the lane petered out in less than half a block. I knew that a righthand turn would take me across a freeway and thence back through the core of urban shopping and a long detour, so I flipped on my turn signal and indicated that I wanted to move into the lefthand through lane. I was unable to move immediately into the correct lane, and was therefore blocking traffic, but the person who was in the left lane indicated their willingness to let me cross over when the light changed.

A young man, possibly 24-25 years old, pulled up on my bumper, rolled his window down and began screaming profanity at me. Screaming? Shrieking would be a better word. He thrust his head out the window, the better to make his oratory heard, although there could be no doubt that his vocabulary was somewhat limited to the crudest of terms. He kept at it throughout the entire cycle of the street lights, only pausing briefly for breath between fricatives. When he was barely able to clear my bumper, he sped past with a squeal of tires, still abusing me verbally and adding gestures in case I'd missed his point.

Yesterday, another incident occurred. I was travelling in the leftmost southbound lane through a construction-caused traffic backup, and several people in the right lane had already angrily cut across my lane and the center lane to make illegal U-turns. My attention was focused on the traffic light, and my vehicle was too far ahead of the man to my right for me to notice that he had his turn signal on (if, in fact, he actually was indicating that he wanted to turn). My awareness was drawn to him when he made a vulgar gesture with a hand held at arm's length where it was clearly in my field of vision. Then he pulled a jack-rabbit start and sped ahead several car lengths, forced his way through a narrow gap and spun into the inside northbound lane. When he had cleared the cars in line ahead of me (headed toward me now), he veered into the center two-way turn lane, pulled alongside my car and attempted (with another vulgar gesture) to flip a burning cigarette through my driver's window. He regaled me with foul language as he drove on past. The smoldering half-cigarette bounced on my front windshield and I flicked the wipers to knock it to the ground.

It would be one thing if these were isolated incidents, but they are not. I drive in town once a week, and unfailingly, some such event occurs. Am I being singled out as a grey-haired, vulnerable granny, or is this the prevailing trend of city driving? The offenders mostly fit a stereotype: rough-looking young men between the ages of 20 and 25, although I was hassled once by a girl in a hot little red car who looked to be no older than 17.

Such occurrences make me fear for my safety on urban streets. As summer temperatures continue to bake us, I am reminded of "Fahrenheit 451" and its violent uprising amongst the automatons. Surely, these people are as disturbed as Bradbury's machines, maddened by the heat playing hob with their wiring.

Oh, and I should bite my tongue right off! The next log entry for the cache I wrote about in my previous post came from the same folks and was a "Found it!" In it, they thanked me kindly for my help and said that the coordinates I had given were spot-on and the containers were all well-hidden, then went on to add that the fault was theirs for not trusting their GPSr and for misinterpreting the hint I had given.

You have to laugh when karma bites you on the bum.

Yesterday was one of the lousiest in my geocaching history, and one has to wonder if the poor showing was due in part to being distracted by the shoulder injury and an overall malaise which I suspect stems from the bee sting. Plainly put, I tried for five caches en route to a family reunion and only found three of them. Oddly, the two I missed were purportedly 1) the simplest and 2) the largest container.

I had no problem locating a small plastic box in a huge wall of landscaping rock set close to butt-prickling blackberry bushes, nor with an ammo can (somewhat over-rated) stowed inside a hollow stump and covered with bark. Nor did I experience any difficulty with the three-star hide which hung suspended on a wire deep inside a metal fencepost, secured to the end-cap by a knurled nut. I walked straight to that one, eyeballed it briefly, stealthily popped it off and withdrew the log, all within easy sight of several muggles with their dogs out for a Sunday morning constitutional. My finds took mere minutes. I searched at least half an hour for each of the two failures before time caught me out as I remembered the reunion and my real mission of the day.

It was tempting to accuse muggledom of waylaying the ammo can I couldn't find with a GPS that told me I was on top of the dratted thing when up against a chain-link fence, and I would have done, but for one thing: another cacher had retrieved it and filed a log ahead of my begrudging "Did Not Find." Likewise, the magnetized Altoids tin which was supposedly easy and straightforward did not turn out to be sticking to any of the metal plates either alongside or under the footbridge, not as far as I could see. It was also found by the other cacher, but all I earned was a headdress of spiderwebs and a few incensed arachnids in my hair. I wanted to say it had been muggled, but could not even suggest it fairly, given the circumstances.

And there's the rub: failure must, perforce, be due to outside factors, doesn't it? I was ready to point fingers, lay blame elsewhere (if perhaps not in print), and even as the accusations crossed my mind, a DNF log came through the mailing system regarding one of my own hides. "We looked and couldn't find it," it claimed. "The hint said to lift the lid, and we lifted several, including a brown one, a green one and a black one. Our GPS told us the cache was 30 feet away, but that would have put us somewhere we might have damaged the landscaping. Only one other cacher has found this, so people must be looking but not filing DNF's. We think this cache is really gone."

I was crabby from heat when I read this, and had to bite my tongue hard not to write a snappy reply. Instead, I responded simply, "The 'lid' you were to lift is a small stone on the top of the rockery." Such hides are very common, and this hunter's statistics showed that they were relatively inexperienced with geocaching on the whole.

Never mind that caches in my area draw very few seekers due to distance from a population center, and this one has no reason to be an exception to that fact. Never mind that the hunters' GPSr told them to go There, but they went Elsewhere instead. Never mind that they allowed preconceived notions to jade their eye for "lids." Obviously, the flaw lay with my cache, my coordinates, my maintenance record, because it certainly couldn't have been through any fault of their own that they didn't find a film canister, any more than my failure to find an ammo can or a magnetized Altoids tin could have been through any lapse in my powers of observation.

This is apparently human nature, and I am human, whether I like to own up to it or not. The shoe seems to fit, tacky and old as it is, even when it's on the other foot.

Ice. Heat. Rest. Well, one out of three's about par for me.

Following instructions, I apply an ice pack for twenty minutes to relieve the swelling in the injured shoulder. That works, and it actually makes it feel better, moreso if I leave it on for an hour. Application of gentle heat following the cold pack restores pain along with circulation. I conclude that this is not a good idea. Rest? I know that word. I've even used it when speaking to other people, but it has little personal significance, and I'm paying for my ignorance of the technique.

Since the accident, I've placed a new cache and found two, one of which involved jeeping in my Toyota up another Log Road From Hell. The logic was that if I could stay in second gear the whole way, I wouldn't do the arm any harm by shifting. The road wasn't as bad as I'd feared, although the car nearly bottomed out on one of the cross-cut gutters, and we left a bit of paint on some close-growing alders, but the theory of second-gear travel worked quite well. The cache was found in the roots of an upturned stump, was loaded with treasures, and was heavily guarded by deerflies, each of which wanted their pound of flesh. I was resting, wasn't I?

The arm will now move out to the side an inch or two, but no matter how hard I try, it will not go forward. I wish I'd stop trying, because it hurts to do so, but I am driven to work through the pain, foolish as I know that is. I pushed too hard today, and the Vicodin is calling my name though I am trying to ignore its insistent voice.

The bee sting has ceased itching for the most part and the swelling has gone down, although I think I can see the remnant of a stinger still embedded under the skin.

I look back a year to 13 August 2004: I totalled my bicycle on that date in a collision with a small child. What is it about August, anyway? I'll be ever so glad when September arrives!

I am injured. For the last year or so, my doctor has been treating me with cortisone injections for suspected bursitis in my shoulder. The treatment has been more or less successful; at least I have been nearly pain-free for as much as six weeks between dosages. Nevertheless, the nature of the pain has made me doubt his diagnosis, and doubting one's physician is never a good thing.

Yesterday, the geas was upon me to do a bike ride/geocaching combo, and given the projected temperature of the day, I chose the shady, lovely Chehalis-Western Trail. My goal was forty miles and seven caches. I had previously found half a dozen or more hides along this particular trail, and had wisely left a few unsought to inspire me to ride it again.

I began at the Chambers Lake trailhead and headed south. At this point, I was thinking of turning around at the intersection with the Yelm-Tenino Trail. The morning was cool and misty, and I had gone no more than a tenth of a mile when I began to wonder if I should turn around and get a jacket from the car. No, the temperature was slated to rise, and I knew as soon as the fog lifted, it wouldn't take long to warm up. I shivered valiantly, welcoming the occasional opportunity to get off the bike and search for treasure-filled Tupperware in the woods.

The first few caches on my list were puzzles, and without exception, were based in math. I enjoy puzzle caches (I've planted several), but my math is long behind me, so there was room for error. Fortunately, I had made no miscalculations, and all my searches culminated with the prize.

By now, the morning fogs had disappeared, and the miles slipped away beneath my rolling wheels. I reached the intersection with the Yelm-Tenino Trail well before noon. I felt good, and quickly decided to go partway down the trail toward the small community of T-9-0, as it was called in railroad jargon. I wasn't planning to go all the way, but one thing led to another, and soon I found myself in the park at the end of the line. I took a quick spot of lunch at a picnic table and then began the return journey, looping off briefly to pick up two caches in suburban Lacey, adding a few miles before re-attaining the trail and returning to Chambers Lake.

One last cache remained on my list, and to access it, it was necessary to travel city streets. I had no idea that there was an extension of the Chehalis-Western Trail north of Martin Way, not until I began pedalling toward where I remembered a railroad trestle from years ago. Yes, the trail picked up there again, at the spot where the prickly gorse once grew. I was glad to be out of traffic. My odometer was reading approximately 43 miles at this point, and I had a mile to go to the cache site. After making the find, I thought, "Well, why don't I make it a nice round 50?" despite the hour of the day.

The more I considered the matter, I wondered how far this unexpected "bonus" trail would take me, so I stopped a pedestrian and asked. When I was told that the northmost trailhead was at Woodward Bay, a mere four miles ahead, it seemed only logical to continue on. Quick computation told me that I would have almost 60 miles to my credit if I did so, and I could have dinner at Taco Time as added incentive.

Well, I attained Woodward Bay in short order, stopped and picked some ripe blackberries to tide me over until supper, and was pedalling along at a fairly good clip when I collided with a bee. In retrospect, I will say that it must have been preparing to get into stinging position, but I was not stung...or not exactly. The stinger penetrated my skin directly above my collarbone, but the bee was too wonky to inject venom and merely buzzed off, down inside my shirt! I grabbed it and pinched hard, shook it out the sleeve, although I wasn't positive of that until I'd gone into the woods and stripped. My neck hurt like mad, but not precisely like a sting. I am extremely allergic to bee stings, and react severely within mere minutes.

Riding on, massaging my poor wounded neck with one hand, I came to one of the obstacle courses designed to slow bicyclists down when they approach an intersection with a highway. These are very narrow and almost impossible to navigate while riding, and in fact, most people choose to go around them on a social path on either side (also very narrow). I am not the steadiest rider, so I stopped here and put both feet on the ground, although I was still straddling the bike. As I attempted to walk it through the opening, the knock-off lever on my front tire struck a concrete block and wrenched the front wheel sideways. Holding the handlebars, I felt something tear in my bad shoulder. With difficulty, I made my way back over the remaining miles to the car, a tidy 60.0 under my belt, and seven of seven caches found.

I don't know how I loaded the bike into the car, nor how I drove home. The pain in my shoulder was excruciating and kept me awake all night in tears, despite ice packs. This morning, my fishing buddy drove an hour from his home to mine, picked me up, drove another hour to take me to the doctor, and then brought me back again with nothing more than a prescription for Vicodin in my hand. The diagnosis? Possible torn rotator cuff, possible burst bursa, possible sprain. Wait two weeks and see if it heals up. If not, I go for an MRI.

Grand. This is what modern medicine gets you. I can't take the pain meds because I develop unsavory side-effects, although I may risk one in order to sleep tonight. I can't lift my upper arm an inch, although I can move the lower arm just fine. I can't drive, can't hold a book, am not supposed to be using the computer. In short, I'm miserable and beyond the pale of medical knowledge once again.

The insulted bee has also left its mark. Apparently, my sensitivity to the venom is so great that I itch from ear to larynx from having splattered the creature on my hide. I was in too much distress from the shoulder to remember to ask doctor about it.

"Thunderbirds Are Go!"

Undoubtedly, that makes very little sense to you, nor would it matter if I told you it is commonly abbreviated "TBAG" and is best said quite loudly, regardless of whether or not anyone is around to hear. There is something gratifying about that cry (pronounced "Tea-bag!") because it denotes moving up one more rung on the game ladder.

Back in the days when parties had little to do with either booze or sex, people found enjoyment in amusements such as "Twenty Questions" and "Charades." "Thunderbirds Are Go" was undoubtedly called by some other name in that era, but it is by this title that it appears in the Groundspeak (geocaching) forum called "Off Topic" (a corner reserved for members only).

The game rules are essentially the same as when played in the parlour. One person speaks a number (the traditional round begins at five), and conversation continues in a normal fashion. At some point, another person will slip the next number in the countdown into a sentence, so forth and so on until at last the number one is reached. At that point, the first person to call "TBAG!" scores a point and begins the next countdown. However, there is a stipulation that no single person may say "one" and "TBAG" in the same round. They can, however, say "three of my dogs chased the neighbor's two cats," counting off both 3 and 2.

In the chat room version, we are using any reasonable starting point and, where possible, the number is accompanied by an image or repeated images showing the correct count. The first number of the countdown is posted, and generally the next several numbers fall into place fairly quickly. As the critical moment approaches, though, time begins to drag. If you are to win, you must be quick to follow the person who says "One," so this means refreshing the page frequently to see if a new number has been added.

Sounds easy, doesn't it? It's not. It is just past 8 PM presently, and I have been refreshing, hoping to see a 1 posted, since 5:15. Our present top scorer has 37 points. I just earned my 15th. There are gaps and shared counts in the roster, and only seven members have scores equal to or greater than mine. Earlier today, a similar tardiness caused two people to jump at once. One (myself) was a split second quicker, and the post of "TBAG!" which followed mine was subsequently lined out by the poster. Oddly, I am scoring points against people with broadband when all I have is dial-up, and slow country dial-up at that, and to further add excitement, I scored the 14th point while in the process of reading the last chapter of "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince." Talk about multi-tasking!

If geocaching sounds like nothing more than an adult version of "Scavenger Hunt" to my readers, let me assure you, it sometimes holds more surprises than a giant economy-size piñata, more thrills than bungee-jumping, and more benefits than you might expect (in my case, the dramatic increase in my activity level has substantially reduced high cholesterol readings).

Yesterday morning, I was in the mood for a challenge, and decided to take on a cache rated 4.5 for terrain on a scoring system which runs from 1 (wheelchair-accessible) to 5 (technical equipment or an overnight stay required). I had tackled this particular cache on two previous occasions, following a series of waypoints which were clearly outlined in the cache description. In this I erred, assuming that the hider's knowledge of woodsmanship was equal to or better than my own. I had no justification for having made that assumption; consequently, I invited disappointment.

The second of the posted waypoints had dropped me to stream level in a steepening canyon lined with devil's club, salmonberry thickets and nettles. The stream itself was often hidden beneath a canopy of outstretched thorny twigs, the rocks in its bed slick with the slime of having spent eternity in wet shadow. I had reached an impasse twice in my blind trust of the printed numbers, and was on the verge of breaching ecologic protocol to carry a machete in my pack until I conferred with another cacher, a woodsman by trade, who convinced me to go with what my woodscraft told me was correct.

By staying high on the trailless ridge, I fought my way through head-high sword fern and mats of spiderweb, past the slashed coulee that debouched into devil's club 60 feet above the creek. I clambered amid deadfall, long rotted and now slickly decaying, drove trekking poles into saturated ground to give my feet something to brace against as I slipped over a massive log and into the unknown footing on its nether side. I was in my element here, alone, with the distant sound of the creek in my right ear, assuring me that I wasn't off my route. It might seem an odd place to find a tiny, scrawny grandmother, but I am more at home in this venue than in a grocery store. I can easily be "bushed" between the dog food and the soap aisles, yet I can navigate four finger ridges, a gully, two swamps and a cliff to get to the "checkout" as easily as you can find your own bathroom in the dark.

I came then to a rock face, the "Devil's Tower" (by local appellation), a massive thumb atop which stands a solitary tree exposed to the threat of lightning. Perhaps the canyon walls have kept it safe, for it has reached a venerable age, that tree, and it stands sentinel to a deeply cleft cataract set around a corner of geography, invisible until you are almost upon the falls' 125-foot height. This was my goal: the falls and the geocache at its feet...that, and getting back to the car again unscathed.

It was a small moment in my day, but a pleasant one, and after a few minutes enjoying the roar of the cascade while I signed the log and made an exchange of items, I again shouldered the pack, climbed up to the base of the monolith and crossed beneath it into the dense and homey forest, outward bound, feeling that I'd earned my stripes as a true geocacher on this adventure.

Only once in my travels did I fall on the sharply banked hillside, and hard enough that several bones in my bum shoulder sounded off like popcorn in a hot skillet as I jammed a trekking pole into the duff to keep from sliding down ten or more feet to a small terrace. The ridge befriended me, led me unerringly to the road a mile beyond. It had been many years since last I pioneered a route in wilderness, and it was good to know I hadn't lost the knack.

Ah, but the day held another surprise. My itinerary took me to a public pheasant-release hunting area later in the afternoon, and as I searched for the geocache hidden on its margin, I discovered what was surely the container: an opaque white jar two quarts in size, like a giant vitamin bottle placed beneath a hawthorn shrub. I knelt to pick it up, discovered it to be heavier than expected and consequently sat it down on the ground instead of placing it on bent knee as is my usual wont.

I spun the lid open, expecting a trove of McDonald's toys and Dollar Store trinkets, but as the jar rocked and the lid was freed of the threads, a dark blue fluid smelling strongly of gasoline sloshed out on my hand. Blue gasoline? My recollection could call up nothing beyond pink or clear. Whatever this substance was, it smelled flammable, and it was parked in bold exposure to the sun at the edge of a 40-acre prairie where the dry, tall grass was swept in undulating waves by the surface breeze. I hastily closed the lid, debating the proper course of action, and by the time I had walked back to the car, I had decided the authorities needed to be called in.

Cell phone reception was marginal and my knowledge of road names was not much better, although I did manage to give sufficient directions to the 911 dispatcher as to my location. Geographic coordinates mean nothing to these people. Had I told them longitude and latitude to the thousandth of a degree, they might have sent aid to south Timbuktoo without the small piece of technology I held in my hand. They wanted cross-streets, so I walked a quarter mile to the intersection and read the numbers off the signs.

An hour passed, and no one had arrived to remove what I was now mentally referring to as an "incendiary device," despite its lack of wires or trigger. A jar of gasoline or other flammable substance set out on a 90-degree day in direct sunlight on a dry prairie certainly smacked of arson in the making as far as I was concerned. I called 911 again, and was told that all deputies were occupied with a rash of domestic violence, child abuse and an accident thrown in for dessert. The potentially life-threatening situations had to be dealt with first, but the dispatcher gave me permission to leave the site when I suggested marking the location with a "ribbon." Having no ribbon, a blue WalMart bag had to suffice. I tied it to the fence adjacent to the bush, but I was not settled in my mind. Why hadn't the fire department been dispatched, rather than the sheriff? I remembered seeing a fire station on the opposite end of town, on my homeward route.

Well, the fireman on duty was as mystified as I was with respect to which department should have answered my call. He listened to my explanation, understood precisely when I explained that I was a geocacher in pursuit of a container filled with silly toys because another member of his team is quite active in the sport. He took note of my directions to the WalMart "ribbon," and told me he'd go right out to investigate. My last hunt for the day was nearby, and as I drove past the firehouse on my way home, the big rig had been stowed inside, indicating that he had indeed gone out on the call.

Will I ever know what the substance was? Not unless I see it again somewhere. Will I ever know how the issue was resolved? Probably not. The small town where this event occurred has neither a police station nor a newspaper. Did I save the prairie from an arsonist? Possibly.

Knowledge reached a balance on this day. In finding Sulphur Creek Falls, I drew deeply from the well, only to find it empty at day's end. This is the inhaling and exhaling of the Universe, the healthy, living organism of which we are all a part. It was a good trade, as all caching trades should be.

A recent experience has reminded me that to be fair, I should present the other side of geocaching: the painful failures. Ah, yes. Some are genuine mistakes in observation, when you overlook the one bit of moss concealing a film can at the base of a tree, only to discover that the same cache has been found by someone's four-year old daughter on the very same day you looked for it.

It was no missed clue that generated my latest DNF (that stands for "Did Not Find"). It was not doing adequate background work. When I first began geocaching, I listed a selection of caches I wanted to hunt in my "little black book." Most people cache in the fashion known as "paperless," having the ability to download coordinates and data directly into their GPSr's and PDA's. I do not have these capabilities, so I jot down the relevant information in a Neopets 4" x 6" spiral notebook. I can get five to seven caches on each page, using my personal shorthand for the salient points. These are the waypoint abbreviation (an alphanumeric code issued by geocaching.com), the coordinates, the size and difficulty level of the hide, and enough driving notes to take me to the site. The latter occupies the bulk of the info.

Some caches are more seasonal than others, and that was the case with this one. It required fording a stream. When I had entered it into the notebook, the water was running higher than calf-high boots could manage, and not wanting to suit up in waders, I postponed it until a few days ago. I knew the spot well for its infamy in angling circles as the place where the term "combat fishing" was born.

I hiked in a pleasant half-mile along the gurgling river, and at the mouth of a feeder stream, turned up it and made my way along the bank to where I knew there were some logs and rocks. With the aid of a trekking pole and some very careful footwork on the mossy, slick surfaces, I reached the opposite bank with only a slight dampening of the socks incurred when stepping in the water over the instep of my hiking boots had been unavoidable. I slid my fanny over the last log, climbed a small embankment and discovered a fisherman's trail leading through a salmonberry thicket. I thought I was home free.

Unfortunately, after passing through the tangled berry vines, I came to a minor swamp. There was no way around it, so I went through, slogging in mud above my boot tops. I wished I'd thought to put on the barn boots that were in my pack, but I hadn't expected that first step to act like quicksand. The damage was done. Proceeding seemed to be the logical course. The boots would have to spend the night on the boot drier, no more than that.

Once out of the mud, I came into the general area of the cache. I knew that it was hidden in or near a fallen tree. There weren't many downed trees nearby, and because I knew the particular hider's modus operandi, I shut the GPSr off and concentrated on the root mass of the largest one. After several minutes of futile search, I fired up the GPSr. Yes, I was in the right spot.

Over the course of the next hour and a half, I combed every horizontal log in a 100-foot circle, in the process trespassing on even deeper mud sumps dozens of times. I climbed the root ball, examined the grassy top of it like a gorilla looking for lice on its offspring. I crawled beneath it, dragged out copious webwork in my hair and disturbed the local mosquito population. As I widened the search, I slipped and fell, wrenching an already painful shoulder. "For Pete's sake!" I cursed, "It's a flamin' ammo box! You've gotta be able to find it. Blind Freddie could find it!"

I did not find it. I plodded back across the muddy hollow, deliberately slid down the bank on my butt to avoid a precarious jump, took advantage of the water flowing across the rocks and logs at the ford to wash the exterior of the boots, then hiked the half-mile back to the car, wondering how I'd missed it.

How simple the solution was! I should have checked the cache logs instead of relying on information I'd written down in May. The ammo box had been reported missing, and had never been replaced.

It hasn't happened often enough that I'm worried about my reputation, but a few days ago, my fishing buddy took the prize for Fish Of The Day with a rainbow that could have eaten all mine for dinner and still had room for dessert. Far worse than that, he caught it in a spot I had objected to fishing on the grounds that it 1) hadn't been producing and 2) was too exposed to the sun for my tastes.

I don't do well in hot weather, perhaps because I'm native to the Everwet State and have grown accustomed to cloudy days and drizzle. Although my illustrious partner in angling was also Washington born and raised, he spent over 40 years of his life in brilliantly-lit California. What is hot to me (above 72) is pleasant according to his scale, and what is hellish in my book (above 80) only begins to touch the toes of hot by his standards.

This particular angler's roost is on the steep, rocky north bank of a river running east to west. There are trees to the south, but their shadows can't make the stretch over the main channel, not by half. The northern rocks last saw shade before the dam was built, back when the river lay deep in the bottom of the gorge and the surrounding timber had never heard a chainsaw's engine burring up to deliver doom, twenty years gone.

I don't often gripe and grumble about fishing, even when I fail to fool my prey, but on this occasion, heat, sun, fishlessness and excruciating pain in my casting shoulder combined to produce a mood most foul. I ripped something in there two weeks back, felt the rending of sinew or muscle as my line arced across the water of a different river. The shoulders, which have taken some of the worst of my lifetime abuses, seem to be determined to be the first to go. At any rate, I expressed my displeasure with voluble complaint, shocking my companion who has largely only seen my sunny side.

Sunny side, did I say? Who got the idea that the sunny side of a cool-weather Washingtonian was their best?

The sun is shining in a cloudless sky, the temperature is a pleasant 72°, you've been to geocaching.com and picked out the cache you want to hunt for (following my guidance, of course, since you're a novice). You've taken notes of the cache size, copied down the encrypted hint (in case you need it), and referred to past seekers' logs for possible enlightenment. Most importantly, you have entered the coordinates into your GPSr, so today we're going geocaching. What fun!

We drive to a wooded park not far from your home. There, in the parking lot where there are no trees to block satellite transmissions, you fire up your GPSr and let it acquire a signal. This process takes a scant few minutes, and you make good use of the time by referring to your notes. You have brought a pack or carry-bag with you containing trinkets to exchange, stuff that we refer to as "swag" (it's an acronym for "Stuff We've All Got").

Let's see what's inside! You've brought a wide range of items, since the rule of the game stipulates "trade up," i.e., exchange a higher-quality item for the one you remove from the cache container. Among your treasures are a Red Rose Tea figurine, several plastic puzzles from the Dollar Store, a brand-new deck of cards, the Columbia River Gorge keychain you picked up on a whim last summer, a few foreign coins, a used CD, a Beanie Baby collectible plushie, a cat collar studded with rhinestones. Yes, that ought to cover just about any eventuality.

Your GPSr has acquired a signal, and its screen tells you that it's presently speaking with eight satellites. Above the displayed image, text tells you that you have an accuracy of 12 feet. You click to another screen, select the waypoint for this cache and request a "GoTo." The navigation page displays an arrow pointing 45 degrees to your right, and distance to the goal as 0.15 miles. Why, that's just a walk in the park! Turn until the arrow points straight in front of you and start walking across the grass.

Whoa! Suddenly, you've come to a creek bisecting your line of travel, and the distance to the cache now reads 0.12 miles. The trail makes a T at the creek, so you must make a choice between left or right. Since I have found this cache before, I advise you to take the right branch. Next time, you'll be on your own without my guidance.

We enter the woods a few yards beyond, and the trail begins to wind. The GPSr has a hard time picking up the signal amongst the trees, sometimes cutting out entirely, but as you keep moving, it connects to another satellite and the arrow again points you toward the goal. Sometimes as the trail takes a bend, you find yourself losing ground on the distance, but then another kink in the path takes you on the correct bearing and soon you see the numbers change from tenths of miles to feet. You're closing in!

526, 454, 302...the arrow begins to shift a little to the left. You go around a small curve and it straightens out, but only momentarily. Now it points toward a tree half a dozen yards off the trail. Keep one eye on the tree and one eye on the arrow as you get closer. Yes, the arrow turns even more as you approach. That tree is definitely suspect. You walk past it, just to be sure. The arrow seems to point behind you, and the distance has wound down to 50 feet.

You know that the cache you're seeking is an ammo can. The cache description listed it as a 2/1.5, representing the difficulty of the hide and the type of terrain. The scale goes from 1 to 5, so a class 2 difficulty may be a bit more cleverly camouflaged than the stereotypical pile of parallel sticks at the base of a tree (a telltale that cachers quickly learn to spot). 1.5 terrain is flat, but not accessible by wheelchair. On the other hand, a 5/5 is extremely cleverly hidden and may require specialized equipment or require an overnight stay. The terrain might be anything from a scuba dive to a rock climb under the class 5 definition.

Step off the trail gently to preserve the integrity of the location. Proceed toward the tree. We arrive at its base, but the distance to the cache still reads 20 feet. However, we do recall that we had an accuracy error (EPE) of 12 feet back at the car. Chances are it's greater here, under the forest canopy. Let's start looking around for "geosign," since this is a popular cache.

Much easier than tracking an animal, finding evidence of previous geocachers is an important tool and one that shouldn't be considered a "cheat" because it's unavoidable except in First To Find scenarios. Look for trodden vegetation, broken branches, disturbed moss, heel marks in the forest duff. Yeah, see that? The moss is packed down at the base of this tree. People have stood here, searching. Did they find anything? We're looking for an ammo can, aren't we? The trunk of this tree is less than a foot in diameter. No ammo can hiding there. I see a geotrail leading to a stump. Stumps are good. Ammo can might hide behind or in a stump...but no, your examination of the stump yields up no can. The back side had rotted away, no can inside the hollow, just pieces of shattered bark.

How 'bout that log? Could the cache be underneath it, right where that fern lies close? The moss on top of the log has been patted down into a mat. Hands may have made that print. Go down on your knees and look under the log. Do you see a cache container? No? Look at the base of the fern. No, no cache, not even under the dry, dead fronds. Rats. As you sit down on the log to think, you realize that your bottom is resting on the imprinted moss. So that's how it got packed down!

No other geosign is visible, but you check under four other logs within a 50-foot circle, take up a handy stick to poke through all the ferns, probe into the debris-lined crotch of a twinned fir tree, and then you cuss. "Where IS the damn thing?" you wonder aloud, hoping that no other visitors to the park are walking on the nearby trail. Feeling defeated, you may browse some huckleberries growing atop that ragged stump, unwilling to turn back quite yet from this, your first cache hunt. You now begin to think that the cache has been "muggled," removed by a non-geocacher (the word derives from the Harry Potter books, and refers to non-magical folk).

Because this is your first time out, I am going to give you a small nudge. I take you by the hand and lead you around to the back side of the stump. "Try harder," I say, and point. You reach inside the hollow and remove just one piece of "fallen" bark, and there beneath it, laying flat in its nest, is the ammo can.

I will stand back, the better to observe your delight as you sign the log and exchange your Columbia Gorge keychain for a tiny plastic McDonald's figure. Forty-five minutes from the car, you have found a geocache, and met the challenge. Gratifying, ain't it?

Don't forget to write a geocaching.com log when you get home!

In my last post, I mentioned geocaching, and that's a word many of you may not be familiar with. It's an adult version of "Scavenger Hunt" (more or less) or, as one person put it, "using multi-billion dollar government satellites to track Tupperware in the woods." As do so many of my pursuits, this one takes me out of doors and provides a compelling goad to get more exercise.

Let's begin with a basic explanation: Global Positioning Satellites orbiting the earth can pinpoint any spot on the globe when used in conjunction with a sophisticated tool called a GPS receiver (GPSr, for short). This little bit of technology has been rendered pocket-sized and inexpensively available to the general public. Sure, you can spend thousands of dollars on one, but its accuracy may be only marginally better than the $100 model due to vagaries of sky condition, tree cover, magnetic disturbances from solar flares and so on. Nevertheless, when coupled with a bit of common sense ("geosense," in the parlance), you can get amazingly close to your goal using a handheld gadget.

How close is close? Around here, 20 feet is good. If you're looking for something that's hidden, that figure narrows your search area down to a 40-foot diameter circle. If you were looking for a Volkswagen, you'd spot it immediately, but these "geocaches" we hunt are significantly smaller. The largest I've seen was a five-gallon bucket, the smallest, a 1 1/2" x 1" x 1/4" Altoids mint tin (not counting the minuscule pet ID tubes I'm planning to hide some day soon). Only the cruelest of us hide the "micros" in the woods! The stereotypical geocache is an ammo can measuring approximately 10" x 8" x 4". There is one stipulation to their concealment: they may not be buried. Buried loot is the stuff of pirate tales. We look for goodies above ground. Now how hard could it be to find an ammo can in a 40-foot circle? The answer is: "Harder than you might think."

So what exactly makes a geocache? The bare bones need only be a container and something identifiable within it, although most contain a small logbook of some sort for the finder to sign, a physical log which precedes logging the find on line. The larger ones are likely to harbour a variety of items for exchange with other geocachers: plastic toys, dollar bills, fridge magnets, small stuffed animals, keychains or sometimes even genuine treasure. The rule of the game as played by members of geocaching.com is to "trade up," i.e., exchange an item in the cache for one of your own that is equal or greater in value. (Geocaching.com's services are available for free. They provide coordinates to geocaches, area maps and a place to log your finds. Paid membership allows you to download coordinates directly into your GPSr or PDA as well as offering a few other perks, but it is not necessary to become a premium member to thoroughly enjoy yourself!)

Now you're wondering why anyone would expend the energy and the financial resource to hunt these crazy things? As Sir Edmund Hilary is often misquoted, "Because it's there." In my next post, we'll go on a geocaching trip and you can see why it's so much fun.

It's been a long time since I posted a blog, and a lot of water has passed under the bridge. My mother, who had been in my care for over a year, passed away just before Christmas.

I've been in the process of putting my life back together. Odd pieces of pattern have disappeared; I can't recall what I used to eat before cooking became a matter of packing as much nutrition as possible into small, soft servings, and hobbies which once appealed to me no longer seem enticing. I have a greater measure of freedom, yet I find myself rushing home to meet the five o'clock deadline which bound my forays into town. My days have been returned to me, but I am too dizzied by the circumstance to grasp them.

Stress has worn me grey and torn pounds from my already scrawny frame, so exercise and activity have become my focus. I devote myself to bicycling, geocaching (a sport which often takes me on brief hikes) and fishing, spending as much time out of doors as weather will allow. When confined by rain too hard to brave, the cat takes advantage of my lap, psychically projecting alpha rhythms which often send us both to the Land of Nod. I feel my years when I am forced to confess to napping, a pastime some folk call art but which I consider wasteful.

Odd as it strikes me, I have a life of my own again. Dazed, I suppose I shall have to figure out what to do with it.