You are looking for an unusual nano-sized cache in one of the most beautiful places I’ve seen so far along the bay. I highly recommend coming out here for sunrise or sunset but be warned that there have been break ins in the parking lot so do not leave anything valuable visible. Below is another installment following Endless Wonder.
Following my itinerant adventures across the East, I made one final jaunt to cap off the year. While not nearly as temporally long, this one without a doubt covered the most ground. A little over four times as much ground, to be precise. The actual time spent moving on the trip totaled to almost fifty hours and was squeezed into just four days. Little did I know that I would have many longer days ahead upon my arrival to the golden land but thankfully these few passed as easily as putting a penny in your pocket. How, you might ask? With words.
While I may have been driving across the vast expanses of the United States, my eyes glassing over as one dull landscape blended into another, my mind was on another type of journey, through the endlessly fascinating expanses of a literary world. I had left the Old Dominion and entered a land of fiction. Tales of heroes and villains, of gain and loss, and of adventure flowed into my ears as easily as water drifts down a creek. And before I knew it, my windshield views and vicarious odyssey had come to a close as I had finally arrived in the Valley. Unpacking, working, and building a new West coast life began to consume all of my time, leaving little left for the spontaneous adventures I had previously enjoyed. Like slowly feeding fuel to an engine, time seemed to accelerate, one month leading to the next with no regard to any traffic signs along the way. To quote the lyrics of a local band, “the years start coming and they don't stop coming”. But, as if fate knew things were moving a little too smoothly, time had a bit of a hiccup.
In the spring of the year this cache was published, a plague like the ones out of storybooks began to overtake the globe. Slowly at first, and then all at once. The eyelids of the world began to shudder and close as it entered a state of hibernation with the hope of sleeping the pandemic away. I, along with all those I knew, joined the world in slumber, hoping to end the pestilence through secluding ourselves away. While this seemed to help at first, it created a different sort of plight or, more accurately, it shined a light on the one that had been already growing in my life; the subtle adoption of mundane and routine. I won’t claim that I saw it right away or decided to take swift and immediate action upon it, but I did eventually. And, as I write this, still do. How does one breathe risk and chance and, most importantly, a sense of wonder into an utterly tame world? By hunting a new geocache in an unfamiliar area each and every day. By putting the GPS in the trunk, driving down the highway, hopping off on an exit chosen by a roll of the dice and getting truly lost. By picking up a kite and a book, letting one soar and the other ground you. By chasing the wind.
Happening upon this place on an evening after work, the view stirred a small part of my sleeping mind. It remembered hearing of a place so similar, so painstakingly familiar, one of stone and endless wind. A place so thin and barren, it had been left unwanted by the world. And those who had eventually come to call it home, having not a way to sell the wind, instead traded upon their fierceness and determination much the same as those who lived here traded their technological legerdemain. Sometimes truth feeds fiction, sometimes it’s the other way around but rarely, in only those truly special circumstances, they build upon each other to create something truly wonderful.
If you’re looking for a moral from this story, like how the one before extolled geocaching over film and literature as a source for endless wonder, let this one be a call for balance. Streaming a song without a doubt pales in comparison to listening spellbound as it’s performed live but dig deeper for the story of its composition, for the flawless meaning behind the lyrics. All this knowing builds a base that, when blended with the glistening aria unfolding before your eyes, is simply magical.
Since geocaching no longer has a place for related webpages, here is a little link to what 'chasing the wind' means: https://kingkiller.fandom.com/wiki/Chasing_The_Wind