Recently the family and I took a vacation to Oregon. During the trip I had the divine privilege of visiting the holy site of the birthplace of Geocaching where I just happened to meet up with the Greek god of Geocaching himself. Who is that you ask? Why it turns out to be Hermes. Apparently there was no god assigned to the Geocache themes of hiding or camouflage so it fell upon him as the god of travelers. Made sense to me as, we all know, Geocaching is 95% about the journey. He was new to the assignment and was in Oregon getting himself up to speed on his new realm of management. He said after some careful consideration he had a few “directives” he wanted to institute, “decrees” if you will. In fact he had this list of ten “commandments” that he asked me to pass along to the rest of you.
#6: Fair Trade Agreement
Early this morning Hermes gave me call to ask what was up with his Ten Commandments series and why he hadn’t seen a new commandment cache in weeks. As it happened, I told him, I was driving around at that very moment looking for a place to hide a nice sized ammo can. That pleased him. He said “Oh it must be time for the 6th commandment, you know, the one all about swag”. He was correct. He then asked why I hadn’t gone after the new cache last night with the $100 swag. First I had to explain to this Greek immortal (because believe it or not Hermes doesn’t know everything there is to know about caching) that the $100 was a FTF prize, not swag. There is a difference. And secondly my bleary eyes didn’t bother to read the whole description, which is a whole other commandment I broke…otherwise Carl the Pickle might not have been alone in that park last night. “Well whatever the case” he said. ”Let them know to always trade up, or even. Always leave something of equal or greater value. And never leave anything that will attract wild life like food or scented items”. I also suggested no drinking water as that can leak and destroy the contents of a cache. He agreed. “Only leave something you wouldn’t mind your own children to find – no alcohol or cigarettes or other ’adult’ items. And don’t get on a soap box and leave literature for religion or politics. People are looking for an ammo can and a log to sign, not a manifesto detailing your beliefs.” I asked if isn’t a list of commandments a manifesto in itself and he answered “Not when it comes from Mount Olympus it isn’t.”.