Found a Birdie

“For the Birds” geocart in Alamance County, NC. Found ’em all.

It’s all about personal circumstances: the ever-deepening sense that life is a vastly different animal now than it was only a few days, weeks, or months ago. Maybe it’s because that, now that Mom is gone, the door to one chapter of life has closed and another has opened. I don’t really know what it is; my sensibilities seem to shift day by day. It’s weird. It’s disconcerting. It’s awful. It’s beautiful.

Somehow, that fact hit me hard today — while geocaching. Now, let me tell you. I’ve been caching since early 2008; I’ve had a bazillion transcendent experiences out there in the wild. I have gone out solo, with big groups, with little groups, with the best of friends, with relative strangers. I have discovered some the most beautiful settings that exist on Earth. I have shared laughs, sorrow, frustration, and excitement with folks damn near as goofy as I. I have discovered spiders bigger than Montana. I have seen the world from heights that would have terrified me even as a child, when I was absolutely fearless. I have found serenity deep in pitch dark storm drains. I have driven utterly ludicrous distances to be the first to find a new cache. Call it weird, but venturing out into the world to seek hidden containers and sign my geocaching handle — Damned Rodan — on little slips of paper brings me a unique joy. Geocaching moves me. It’s passion.

I got off work early today, and since there was a new geoart (a series of caches whose icons on the geocaching map create a specific design) a half-hour or so away in Snow Camp, I decided to give it a go on my own. The caches that comprise the geoart (“For the Birds,” it’s called) are all park & grabs — meaning they are hidden so you can just drive up, hop out, quickly find the cache, and sign the log. Generally, such hides are far more fun with a group of folks, more for the social experience than the challenge of actually hunting the caches. Going solo after park & grabs usually falls into the “eh, it’s okay” category. But with all those Death Cooties roaming free out there, I am still not keen on piling into a vehicle with other folks to claim smileys. Yet, today, all by my lonesome... I had a fookin blast. An oddly euphoric experience. Inexplicable, on the surface. Revealing, I guess, if I were to become ridiculously introspective. I’d say I won’t, but I think I already have. Fuggit. Circumstances today were such that I could hardly have enjoyed myself more. The caches in this series lurk along the rural back roads of southern Alamance County. Today, there was virtually no traffic (something I had forgotten was even possible), and going from cache to cache, making the find, and signing the log turned out to be as zen an experience as any I can remember. No stress. No anxiety. No anger. No grief. Just unmitigated satisfaction.

I will take it. Tomorrow is another day. As I deal with the aftermath of Mom’s passing, I keep finding increasingly complicated tangles of red tape to untangle. It is a long, slow, frustrating process; if you have lost loved ones for whom you have assumed responsibility, you may understand what I’m talking about. The issues will get ironed out. Too often, my problem is convincing myself that I don’t have to take care of every detail right now. But that is my nature. It has its benefits and its drawbacks.

Anyway, I welcome this little oasis of joy. May there be plenty more for me and for you.

That is all.