I was turned on to Geocaching by my 5 year-olds BFF. Apparently his dad takes him geocaching more than regularly and they have a ball, we hear about it incessantly. I decided to do a little research (called his mom) and found out I needed two things to begin:
1. A hand held GPS (guess what big daddy got for fathers day . . .)
2. An account at Geocaching.com
Both items firmly in place I should be good to go, explore and discover the great outdoors with the young men in my charge. The world is ours boys - let's go!
I was an immediate failure. The kids got so mad at me, wanted no part of it, impatience is an understatement. They mercilessly taunted my ineptness at using the GPS thing (I never was one for instruction reading). We went, we sought and we never found. We tried again (they whined and moaned) we failed again. 3rd time took a friend, failed again. Loser.
My friend, however, intrigued by the concept, went home signed up for her own geocaching.com account, downloaded an app to her phone and took her son the next day. She was a pro geocacher in about two weeks having found cache's in many surrounding towns and states. With my pride firmly stuffed, I asked for a few pointers and she graciously shared . . . . then told me of a certain geocache nearby that we simply had to do.
I didn't tell the boys we were going Geocaching, they would have refused to attend. Instead I took them for a "hike" but this is what we found:
This place is called "The Depot" and it is hidden in the heart of the Needham (MA) Town Forest. Who knew? Stumbling upon it is sheer magic and said magic continues to unfold the longer you are there. If you get too caught up in admiring and discovering one part you risk missing so much more.
You could step on this guy:
or not see these:
there are simply countless miniature vignettes hidden all around and while we found many, I can only imagine how many we missed.
If we weren't in middle of a drought, that dock would have been perfectly submerged in water. The massive train trestle is so amazing, the whole thing is a bit more than my modern brain could comprehend . . .
This massive structure, every last little stick, was toted into the forest and built by hand by Mr. Metcalf a man who is spending a good part of his retirement and obvious considerable talent, building this ....place. We had the esteemed pleasure of meeting him, by chance, on location.
If I hadn't visited geocahing.com and gotten the particular clues for this cache, and if I hadn't also run into Mr. Metcalf at the scene, I wouldn't have known to look here:
And find the hidden key that opens this:
Our first ever geocache found! Though might as well retire, as there could never be one to top this. Inside the bench is a box of prizes to swap and a log book to enter your visit. There is also a letterbox set up if Letter Boxing is your outdoor adventure sport of choice.
While I sat in contemplative wonder ("I am such a looser, I want to do this when I retire, I could build something like this, why do I waste so much time, I am never watching TV again, No it's the computer, the computer is an evil time waster". . . ) My boys played with the trains all around "Martini Junction":
At last Mr. Metcalf decided to give us the whole show. He has another locked box, one that you can not find the key to, he keeps that one on his person. Out comes a full blown super powered, remote control train that chugs on down the rails. I thought my son would have immediate and sudden heart failure. It was almost too much to take, to accept, to grasp. Where are we? What is happening? This is utterly beyond words!
Of course it worked beautifully, the man is a freak of nature. He has been building and adding to this scene for the last ten years, has never asked permission to do so, he just does it. He owns it, people love it and he knows it is sheer magic. Magic in his making, and our finding. I wanna be Mr. (or Mrs.) Metcalf when I grow up.
