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.