This article was originally published on Cache Up NB. It has been mirrored here for archive purposes only.
When people are first introduced to the sport of geocaching, typically most folks get excited by the prospect of being able to use some piece of technology to go out and find something that most other individuals don’t even know is there. How many new cachers have you met that seemed to get a thrill out of the fact that they seem to be “in the know” and part of an almost secret society that knows about these containers that are hidden everywhere. There’s always this thrill of being able to find something that most don’t know are there. The thrill increases as you are able to find those caches which seem to be “camo’d” in plain sight. It adds a certain thrill to the game.
When you describe the hobby of geocaching to folks who don’t know anything about it, you typically give them the spiel about how it’s a sort of high tech treasure hunt that combines technology and the thrill of the hunt. Questions come in about how it works, whether or not you actually take the container with you, and what the “point” really is. However, when describing geocaching to others, how often do you include how much of a social activity it really is?
One of the things that I have come to learn over the course of the few years I have been caching is that geocaching is not just about going out and finding plastic containers in the woods. It’s also largely about the people around you and the caching community as a whole. This doesn’t apply only to our own region here in New Brunswick, but everywhere in the world.
Whether you are in Moncton, Fredericton, Halifax, Edmonton, Toronto, New York City, Chicago, London England, New Zealand, Warren Pennsylvania, or any other community in the world, you’ll find cachers. You find these people who all share this one common interest that binds them together. You can be half way across the world, pull your car over to a guard rail, and someone else can come by and instantly know you are a cacher and you immediately can connect with them and share your love of the sport.
How many times have you run into other cachers while out and about and it’s led to interesting conversations, or even maybe a new friendship. All because you were looking for some silly container that was hidden for no other reason than for people to find it.
When introducing someone to the sport of geocaching, how often do you mention the fact that cachers group together on many occasions to go on a group hike, meet for breakfast, or just hang out and play some poker with good friends. How often do you talk about the larger group events that bring in such crowds? Things like the Fundy Hike events, the Bye Bye Winter Bash in Fredericton, or even the annual Moncton Race for Cache event? On a larger scale, how about things like GeoWoodstock where people from literally all over the world converge on a single location for no other reason than to share their love of the sport of geocaching with people from across the globe. As of this writing, the last GW had 2,468 Attended logs on their cache page. That’s almost 2,500 people coming to one spot all because of geocaching.
Speaking purely for myself, I’ve never been someone who has been comfortable just walking into a crowd of strangers and introducing myself. Once I get to know people, I’m fine, but that “breaking the ice” part of meeting new people is very intimidating to someone like me. The first event I went to was Rev Slippery’s GSAK potluck in Riverview back in April of 2008. I didn’t know anyone there and didn’t know quite what to expect. Ironically enough, Rev’s inability to get the internet working in the room, and my winning of the door prize sort of brought me out of my shell a bit and all of a sudden I found myself a bit less shy and meeting some new people.
Now, more than three years later, I’ve attended over 100 events, including 13 of which I have been the host. I’ve met countless cachers from literally across the country and beyond. I’ve gone on some awesome caching trips with some new good friends I’ve made, participated in some large group hikes on some trails that I didn’t even know existed, and have participated in active debates amongst cachers both on this site as well as many others. It’s that sense of community and the social aspect of this hobby that I really wanted to write about.
A few weeks ago, Moncton’s largest geocaching event finished up at Centennial Park and I found myself looking around and seeing the faces of so many cachers who were interacting, talking, laughing, and enjoying themselves. None of these people had found a single cache during the day’s activities, but here they were, all together, in one place, enjoying each other’s company. Even folks who had chosen not to actually race were in attendance just because they wanted to come out and enjoy being around other cachers. In seeing these people together, it made me want to sit down and write a little bit about how social geocaching really is.
I think during the course of trying to “get the next find”, many cachers forget about the fact that perhaps the single biggest benefit that geocaching has, is it’s ability to bring people together. Yes, there are plenty of people who cache but do it on their own and choose to remain outside of the community, but most cachers at least at some point decide to make the jump and attend their first event, and learn that it’s not all about the numbers, and finding the container. It’s about sharing your passion for the sport of geocaching with others who feel the same way.
How has the social aspect of geocaching affected your life?
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