My son was only about four our five years old when he was insistent we go to Garry Point Park one day to “look for something and I know where it is,” he explained in that fulsome way kids have.
I had no clue what he was talking about, but a trip to Garry Point sounded good.
Once we got there, he was like a dog on the hunt for a bone. After scrambling along the shore’s edge and getting shredded by the blackberry bushes (that have since been removed), he came to a large rock near the point. He looked furtively around to see if anyone was watching, then cleared away the smaller rocks at the base and reached in behind the big rock and came out with a small plastic box.
I couldn’t believe it. How the heck did he know that was there?
We opened the box to find a little notebook, a pencil, a few Pokemon cards and some other trinkets. A pot of gold couldn’t have been more exciting — well maybe. But, still, it was an incredible thrill. The idea that we were in the loop of this secret communication gave us the tingles.
In the box was a particular toy or trinket that caught his eye. He explained that we could take it, but we were supposed to leave something. (Clearly, he had been well briefed, either by a friend or someone at preschool.)
We hadn’t come prepared with an offering, so we planned to go home to get a treasure of our own and come back the next day to make the trade. As I stood watch, my son sneakily negotiated the blackberry thorns to put the box back where no one, save for us in the know, would find it.
Such was my introduction (about 15 years ago) to the phenomenon of geocaching.
Today’s feature (see page 17) goes into more detail about who does this and why. While I certainly haven’t made a hobby of it the way some you’ll read about have, I can appreciate there is something special to it.
For months afterwards, maybe even a couple of years, whenever we were at Garry Point, my son would look for the box, just to see it’s still there and look at what was in it.
The thrill of discovering buried treasure is timeless. But so is that precious sense of feeling a part of something bigger, the idea we can give and take from a source that we willingly share with others — others we don’t know, but we’re somehow communicating with.
Granted, this is just a game, but it’s worth its weight in gold if it can help us savour those moments when we recognize our connection to our physical space and those strangers with whom we share it. That web is, after all, our reality. I suspect, the more we appreciate that fact, the kinder we will be to each other and the planet. Indeed, that’s a treasure worth hunting.
