There’s something about geocaching, even now, that exists in its own celestial plane; an alternative universe at right angles to ours and just to the left of this world. The places, the experiences and the language we use all look, feel and sound familiar to others, but there is a nuance, a deeper, double meaning and a life beyond the veil that others cannot see.
I’ve talked previously about how very different this game was when I first discovered it in 2006. There were far fewer geocaches out there and they were more basic than those we have now, less complex. There was no strong geocaching community, although Events were a ‘thing’ and even a couple of Megas had happened. I had been geocaching for several years before I’d even met another player or attended an event. There were no smart phones to speak of and certainly no social media. [See my blog post ‘Seven Things that didn’t exist when I started geocaching’]
All of this served to make geocaching feel a bit underground, slightly ‘secret squirrel’ and therefore a bit nerdy. For me, the overlapping rings on my Venn diagram included various aspects of the ‘outdoors’ life, including hiking, orienteering and navigating, camping and a bit of radio ham/CB. Players were using ‘handles’ rather than their own names and it was poor form to reveal your true identity to others, something that persisted into the early days of the WWFM.
Part of this secrecy was the protect the game itself. It’s not that players were doing anything wrong, as such, but getting spotted retrieving a cache might result in it subsequently being taken by a member of the public. I know of at least one player, even now, who won’t even attempt a search if there is anyone in their line of sight.
However, there was also an element of self-protection. Smart phone usage is so ubiquitous nowadays that it’s hard to recall just how niche internet usage was back then. Ebay was the wild west of trading; online dating was often seen as seedy and sordid and only around 38% of home had a computer anyway. Certainly my then wife was highly suspicious of my ‘meeting people off the internet’ and talked about my new hobby as if I was going dogging!
The first event I attended was a World Wide Flash Mob (WWFM)_event in my home city of Lincoln. Flash mobs were another by-product of the burgeoning online revolution, with forums, chat rooms and other sites providing a real-time platform for people to mobilise, leading to more effective protests, bigger raves and surprise performances known as Flash Mobs. WWFM embraced this and on that day dozens of geocachers, including myself and my young daughter, loitered at the edge of Lincoln’s Castle Square, waiting for a signal. When the whistle was blown, people seemed to come out of the woodwork, chasing each other around and arresting one another in a pretend game of cops-and-robbers. On another signal, we formed groups for a game of geocaching bingo, where we talked to other geocachers, asking questions to enable us to complete a line and, eventually, shout BINGO! A quick group photo was then taken before we all walked off, and slid back into the shadows, invisible once more.
But from that first time that I heard the word ‘geocaching’ I was drawn in, stumbling into geo-Narnia where there were others like me, mostly unseen, who (to mix literary references) operated under a cloak of invisibility. The first time I geocached in London this was a revelation to me. Others were passing within metres of me, totally oblivious to my activity, unaware of my intentions. I could crawl under benches, shimmy up walls or furtle around in bushes, and no one would bat an eyelid. In fact, they didn’t even seem to see me at all, as if I’d engaged my own cloaking device or, to further mangle my cultural references, I’d cut into the next universe with a Subtle geo-Knife. It also helped that I probably wasn’t the weirdest acting person in the vicinity.
Nowadays, we would probably have already arranged with each other via a WhasApp group, to meet somewhere for a drink, laugh about the fun we’d just had and arrange our next excursion. However, that day we all just left and I’ve only since met one other player who admits to being there that day!
The first Mega I attended, in the West Midlands, was another revelation to me. I’d heard of Megas but wasn’t really sure if I fancied them. By now I’d totally bought into the whole geocaching underground movement, and couldn’t quite picture what a large group of players would look like or do, let alone whether I wanted to be a part of it. But I was recently both single and unemployed, and had decided to embrace new experiences as part of an ongoing healing process, and so along I went. Arriving mid-way through the week, I was astounded by the enormity of the campsite, the flags and lights, the children, the dogs and the buzz. It was like stumbling out of the woods into the First Narnia Council, or getting off the bus and finding yourself in Diagon Alley.
Explaining what a Mega is to non-caching friends still feels a bit like describing a blend of music festival and scout camp. Like both these experiences, you have to be there to really ‘get it’, and my first encounter with a Mega totally changed my outlook on geocaching and the possibilities it now afforded me. I no longer had just one or two caching friends, I was part of a community, immersed in a culture and was ready to soak it all up!
It may feel to us now that geocaching is mainstream. Online communities are a standard way for people to communicate on matters of common interest. Discovering a new scene or game is no longer an ad-hoc or random occurrence, but the usual way in which most people find a new (or old) band, meet a possible partner or decide what to do that afternoon. Just as we no longer really buy newspapers to discover what is happening out there, or know what to have for tea just because it is Tuesday, we can now plot geocaching walks in the next county, plan to meet ‘strangers’ in another country, solve complex puzzles just using the slab of plastic and precious metals in our hand.
Yet there is something hard-wired into this game that will always make it feel a little side-stepped from the norm, a bit beneath the radar and always slightly alternative, as if we all just accompanied Matthew McConaughey into a black hole and were watching our colleagues, friends and families from behind a five-dimensional geo-bookcase.
A Wright April 2024
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