A six-month-old baby cache honors the memory of Grandpa with a fishing expedition, set by Cache Owner LukasKC13.
Wintry air greets us, with communal windshield scraping in progress. Stoically adapting to precipitation turned white, deep, and frozen, new Americans discover that, for conversation starters, Ohio weather always wins.
The geotrail speeds north then east, toward Mohican country. Water vapor cocoons, as our spinning planet pilots the hemisphere back toward summer, somewhere far, far ahead.
With the flick of a finger, the freeway rolls our puny pinball off the exit ramp. Turning here and there, we land on the toenails of the Appalachians. Homesteads climb up the hill, opting for space that is wide and open, though somewhat horizontally-challenged.
City transplants blend in. Or not. Restaurants, stores, and admiring neighbors are far away. Images which reflect self back to self are lost in immense, empty landscapes, with an infuriating absence of likes or thumbs up.
Cell towers follow remote workers into the countryside, tentacles probing the phones in every household. Conscience, empathy, codes-of-conduct, imagination, heritage, and individual determination clash cosmically with data-collection and manipulation.
Our coordinates suddenly land squarely, on a road where dogs run free, and mailboxes can be fish. We have to be close, right, Lukas?
The mail truck pulls up.
You girls okay?
At that second, the bait can beside the mailbox catches our attention.
Yes, yes, we are. Just getting a geocache out of that can. (You really should be honest with the US Mail, shouldn’t you?)
Well, I always wondered what that thang was for. Is that like a Pokemon thang?
Not really, but okay.
Conversation over. Yes.
The cache is hooked. Previous finders gently cherish the story of Grandpa and grandson, fishing and caching together. In a great circle of connection with us, the mail lady, the watching house, the log signatures, and the sharing of a beloved bait can, happiness settles, with plenty for all.
OH Love Of Geocaching 