Actual Geocacher

I am a Geocacher. It's...like an urban treasure hunter. People who also have the geocaching app can hide little pill bottles, or small boxes, or even, big ammo cases. They simply find a good hiding spot, log in their coordinates via GPS, and let the others have the fun of trying to find it. Sometimes they have nothing but the necessary pad of paper, sometimes they have goodies in them you can trade out. There is always the pad of paper, usually a pen, so you can sign your name and the date, and you log into the app that you found the cache.

I love Geocaching, I've found all of the ones in my town, and almost all of the ones in the neighboring towns and cities, besides a few that had most likely been snagged or moved by people who don't Geocache and are just being a pain. It was fun, it was often off the beaten path, usually at a park, or patch of trees that you'd never know was there. Sometimes it would be centered in a building or historical site.

Like I said I had the majority of the cache's around me, and if a new one popped up you bet I was one of the first to find. I prided myself on often finding those everyone else reported they could not find, giving hints when necessary. So imagine how excited I was when not one cache popped up, but, three, by the same person, overnight. It was a multi-cache, a series of cache's that when you found the first one, would give you a clue to the next one, and so on and so forth. It was almost perfect, it was a just a few more days of work before I would be on vacation. The series was out in the middle of the woods, following some unidentified creek, so I could get my camping gear and make it a fun trip.

So for the next three days, I kept checking on the cache's, seeing if anyone had found them yet if they had any comments. After the first day there weren't but by the second day, the comments came in. One simply said "Cool, but a little weird." and a second one "Someone took some time to hide this one. Super cool though. Push in!" Well at least they weren't pranks, no one had uploaded any photos of the area so I was going to have to rely on the GPS on my phone. The third day there were no new entries, just the two people from before saying they found the rest, and that they were all varying degrees of odd or weird. It was pretty exciting, I loved when the caches were placed in weird and creative spots.

I rushed through work the next day, having packed the night before I said my goodbyes to my coworkers I headed out to my car and drove straight to the location where the first cache was marked. It was a two-hour trip, and I was getting hungry, but I made food my reward for finding the first one, and after dinner, I could set up camp. The others had found the other two quickly the next day so I assumed they weren't terribly hard to find. I retrieved a giant backpack from my car that I had bought last year and hoisted the heavy pack onto my back as I stepped towards the woods. It had everything, my sleeping bag tied neatly to the bottom, my tent supplies at the top, and a change of clothes, some rations, and fire-starting tools, and a solar powered charger for my phone.

I pulled my smartphone from my pocket, glad I had charged it fully on the way over. I turned on the Geocache app to find where I was in correlation to the hidden geocache. I wasn't far, only a few hundred feet already. Dinner would be early, I thought to myself, might even be able to cover some ground to the second one before I have to set up camp. I wandered through the dense woods, there were signs that the others had come through this way, but otherwise, the brushes and trees were thick in this area. It was a help that these signs of travel were about, and after following them for a minute or two deeper into the woods I found that it got much easier to traverse.

The trees were beginning to open more and more, and the brushes were becoming fewer and fewer. The Geocache app made a sound that indicated I was within a hundred feet. I began to look at the trees around me, and where their base met the ground. People often liked to put the cache in between the exposed roots and cover them up with debris. I began circling tree's, studying them intently for any sign. As I rounded a thick oak I saw it, two pieces of kindling had been nailed into the oak in the shape of a cross about shoulder height, and it looked like the bark had been cut in a square around it. How strange.

I looked at the hint which was simply a "+" and then to the comment which said I should push in. Was it some kind of panel? I pushed and the wood made a quick click. Below me, another square cut-out of wood fell from the tree revealing the base to be hollow inside. I was impressed, someone had put a lot of thought into this.

There was a pad of paper and two trinkets, calling cards of the two guys who had found it before. I knew them by their trinkets immediately, Jerry and Eric, good guys, we had geocached as a team a few times. One was simply the Ace of Spades, the other a little army man. I placed a marble which was my calling card, signed the pad, and logged into the app that I had found the first of three caches.

As I was putting back the pad, I noticed another piece of paper towards the back of the hollow tree base. I reached in and grabbed it and pulled it out. It was the clue to the next geocache. It would be essential to follow whatever secondary instruction the note held to locate the next geocache, the GPS wouldn't be enough. I flipped the note open and read the instruction "X in the sky marks where the cache lies." Interesting, the next one would be difficult it sounded. Then I noticed at the bottom of the note read "Looking for an extra challenge? I have hid another cache nearby." Followed by a few numbers, coordinates for the GPS, and a smiley face.

I grinned, I loved it when the hiders had extra stuff you could do.Without a second thought to my already complaining stomach, I typed in the coordinates into my phone. They spot was only a few hundred feet away. I patted my stomach and traveled to the location my phone indicated. When I arrived I immediately noted the remnants of a campfire. It didn't seem very old, and I assumed it had been Jerry or Eric's who had come after the secret cache and then set up camp. I looked up at the sky and noticed it was beginning to get late.

I set up camp, got a small fire going, and ate some of the food I brought. to satisfy my hunger. By the time I was done it was starting to get dark so I decided to turn in and look for the hidden cache in the morning. I turned off my phone to preserve battery power and promptly fell asleep. When I woke up the sun was shining through the tent walls. I got up, ate breakfast and set out to find the hidden cache after turning on my phone.

I didn't even break down camp, just searched the surrounding area. As I wandered around, aimless, I searched tree's, tree bases, even looking along the nearby banks of the creek. After another ten minutes, I finally found something. Three strings of fishing line wrapped around a stump leading into the creek. It wasn't being pulled taut, the creek moved slowly as it drifted down the mountain probably unable to move whatever was at the end of the fishing line. I pulled the string and it came out quickly. The end of the fishing line held a strange sight. A pair of boots filled with water from the creek covered in mud. How long had they been in there? For being covered in mud they seemed pretty new. I pulled them fully out and drained the water on the shore. A pill bottle fell out of one side, though it too was filled with muddy water. It didn't look like it had anything in it but I decided to open it anyway.

Draining the pill bottle I found the remnants of what used to be a pad of paper, no pen or pencil. I guess it was just a good way to get rid of some old boots. Too bad the pill bottle had a crack in it or something. It should have been waterproof. That or it hadn't been properly sealed. Shrugging I return the now empty bottle back into the boot, the damage had been done.
I threw the boots back in the water feeling a little disappointed. I head back to camp and start breaking it down. Grumbling about wasted time I decide to skip lunch to hike to the next place. If I could get the last two by nightfall I would be happy. As I walk I notice the forest is beginning to thicken again, the tree's seeming to almost grow side by side as if making walls. How strange, I muse, it's as if the forest is creating its own paths. Still taking in the tree's and their position I look up at the canopy. How the trees were set-up the canopy opens up, showing the sky in a big X formation.

My phone beeps at me, I'm already near the second cache. The hint was "X in the sky is where the cache lies". I begin to scan the tree's again but don't find the same pattern this time. As my vision falls towards the ground I notice only a few feet away from me is fresher, loose dirt compared to what I currently stood on. It must be buried! While it is against geocaching etiquette to bury cache's I find that I don't really mind in this case. I make my way over and kneel down, removing big handfuls of dirt as I dig. It's not buried very far, maybe half a foot, but I fish a small box out of the hole, opening it up finds me a new pad of paper, a pencil, and the two calling cards of Eric and Jerry. I inspect the box but it's a simple wooden design, square, four sides, nothing abnormal. Before I place it in the hole I look down to see another partially unburied box. I quickly dig it out, it's the same design as the previous box, but this one is heavier.

I open it up to find it damn near filled to the brim with cloth. I don't hesitate to pull the cloth out, only to find it's a slightly dirty shirt, It's the only thing in there, and the shirt, plain blue, was too big for me. I stuff the shirt back in, this must have been a secret cache, Eric and Jerry are going to feel foolish. Before I close the box I notice a carved message in the inside lid. It simply read the next set of coordinates. I put them in my phone and find it's another hour or two of hiking if I am to make it before sundown.

I pull out a protein bar from my backpack, sourly looking at it before I open it and take a bite and begin hiking. As I leave the area the trees begin to open up again. I find myself wondering who planted these cache's, what was this person like, and where the third one will be. I look at my phone to see the hint which just reads "In the heart of the fire.". Interesting. The hike was rather dull, but I kept myself entertained as I went, just enjoying nature and playing games in my head, whatever I had to do to keep going without stopping for five minutes here or ten minutes there. I wanted to be able to set up camp, find the cache, eat dinner and go to bed before night hit.

An hour and a half later my phone goes off saying I was close to the newest one. I wasn't expecting to come across it so soon. I figured there was still a good twenty minutes until I was near. I looked around my surroundings this time and found it to be sparse of old tree's, mostly new shoots about 15 feet high peppered the landscape around me.Not surprising as they ground was peppered with big rocks, hard for trees to seed here easily. I was happy though, as it was only three twenty in the afternoon. I had plenty of time to do everything I wanted to get done before nightfall. The first thing I wanted to do was get this backpack off, so I figured I would set up camp once more before looking for the cache. Searching the area I quickly find a clear patch where the remnants of another camp had previously been made. Strangely there were two fire pits to mark this area for me.

My mind races, the clue said I would find the cache in the heart of the fire! One of these was the fake fire where the cache was hidden, while the other was probably Eric and/or Jerry. I set up camp and grab my walking stick, grasping the thick end, using the smaller side to poke and prod the ash for any signs. The walking stick gets caught on something round with some weight. I pull it up to find the strangest sight, some kind of ribcage is barely hanging onto the end of my stick. Did they cook a whole deer up here or something? 
No, it's not that big, and anatomically different. Looking back into the pit I scream as I see the top half of a blackened skull. My scream echoes all around me as I drop the stick and leap back. What the fuck! Was that real? I step forward, inching closer to the pit, perhaps it's just a prank or something. The rocks around the pit are dyed red though, and some of it is still wet and sticky. How did I not notice this when I first got here? I have to get out of here. I have to get out of these woods and tell someone about this.

I turn away from the campfire and I am about to run from the scene. In my panic, I don't even think of the camp I've set up or the things I am leaving behind. I don't pay attention to the jutting rocks in the ground either, which catches at my footing causing me to slip, catching another large rock to my head as I spill to the ground. I roll over onto my back, suddenly feeling woozy, my vision blurry, then darkness.

When I wake I am still lying in the dirt, the sun has almost fully gone down and the fire is crackling low. At least I hadn't put too much wood on...wait... I didn't light that fire. Fear grips me as I quickly look behind me to the fire pit only to see...nothing. No one is there, just the fire burning low, keeping my feet warm. I stand, feeling rather woozy still, before daring to take in my surroundings. I don't see anyone about, but it's clear someone had been here. I had to leave though, I had to get out of here.

I am walking through the woods and I am all alone. I pull my phone from my pocket but it's dead. Suddenly in the dead screen of my phone, I spot someone following me quietly about 30 feet back.

...Shia Labeouf...