In 2007, Cache Owner twobears102174 invites us to a feast at Grandmother’s house. Hooray for the pumpkin pie!
Stringing our copper thread through the northern needle, we stitch miles and miles together, huddled under the downy quilt of cotton-flecked batting far above.
The Clear Fork Reservoir exits at Lexington, just south of Mansfield, where OH-97 winds northeast. When the Clear Fork branch of the mighty Mohican sank under the reservoir in the 1940s, Mansfield filled up a glass with 4 billion gallons of drinking water.
Along the shoreline, enchanted by the sparkle of dancing light, wild weeds of winter wave and whisper.
The soft, rich clay of the Stoller Road trail rears up, reshaping soil into a sculptured mile of molasses and Gorilla glue.
Wild and free, old-timer leaves soak sun into gnarled bones.
A tiny beauty parlor puts finishing touches on today’s demanding stylistas, who gaze unspeakingly at an eerie finger beckoning us onward.
Colossal pines, intertwined with secrets of eons of winters and summers, anchor the water that so surprisingly arrived at their front door 75 years ago.
We are halfway there. Gulls cackle across the water, geese trumpet that they are the real heavy lifters here, and woodpeckers tap out Morse code jokes to distant relatives, about the Two-leggeds sliding through the mud.
A fallen forest monarch allows us to climb on. The June tornado took no prisoners as winds brought down decades of shelter for all tiny forest creatures. Even in death, the tree will offer up nourishment for the tiniest microbes in this circular biome.
Like wounded spiders, branches reach and balance on earth never before touched by these fingertips, forming air and light into a eulogy of loss.
The tiniest of babes awaken and stretch, sending roots into long ancestry of leaves, bark, and soil. Aunts and uncles tower high above, in a world of wonder and joy.
With an animated roster of nicknames in past logs, the Twin Towers emerge like Stonehenge. Here The Rich Doctor built his 1920s hunting lodge, where drinking, hunting, gambling, and carousing added technicolor to Mansfield legends. Rare guns, a very loud phonograph, and a favorite hunting dog round out the story.
One night the dog disappears. The dog groomer named Homer disappears. The hunting lodge burns down. Everything is gone. Except. The sound of baying and howling through the dark Clear Fork nights. And the sound of Midnight Rhapsody wafting down from the fireplace.
Past cachers record a fruitless DNF in 2014. They return again three years later, then at last, in 2020, on visit #3, they land the fish. Earnest geo-finders stand beside the cache and record their coordinates into the weblog. New searchers scroll through, looking for clues in past logs. They find that each coordinate pair leads to a different spot. The watching trees would ROFL if they could. As it is, their winks catch the drifting phone waves, twist them into pretzels, and mail them back down to the Two-leggeds.
In 2020, cacher BrotherTim offers advice for the ages . . . If you get yourself in the right position, this one will jump right out at you. Otherwise we’re gonna be walking in circles for a very long time.
Our sharpest-eyed team member climbs down and back up the ravine, looks across, and spots the cache. Pointlessly wandering, our searching team member listens to the shouted directions . . . and scores.
Along the mile backward, a forest hums to rest. Long shadows waft through loftiness of unseen branches, bursting toughness of bark, quivering leaves waiting for buds still wrapped in sleepy warmth.
With a gentle kiss on earth’s forehead, repeated each night, radiance reassures that all is well.
Across a rotating planet, never-ending sunsets compel earthlings to sit in stillness, sheltered for these brief seconds from the scuffle and struggle of Screenworld, mentally filing and logging
the blessings which hallow our days.
OH Love Of Geocaching 