“Flight Patterns”
Inspired by Nelly Furtado’s “I’m Like a Bird”

NOTE  This particular cache is for the SCAR 2025 event, and should not be sought out until after 5:30 pm on May 23rd, 2025.  If you do happen to think you might want to break out ahead of time, be fairly warned....Your GPS and geocaching app will both simultaneously develop a deep philosophical crisis and begin questioning the very concept of “north.”

It starts with a walk—not a hike, not a destination—but a meander through a patch of green stitched into the fabric of suburbia. You know the kind: a ribbon of trail where the map curls between backyards, where swings hang crooked and dogs bark behind fences like they’re calling you back to a life you no longer live.

This was once your park. Or maybe it never was, not truly, but it held you for a season. A summer or two. Long enough to learn how to be alone and not feel lonely. Long enough to fall in love and then fall out again. And now, you’re back, GPS in hand, looking for something left behind—or maybe something never quite found.

The song flutters into your mind like a memory hitchhiking on the breeze.

“I’m like a bird, I’ll only fly away…”

And for a moment, it’s all there: the way her laugh tumbled into the dusk, the way your hopes perched lightly on your shoulder like wings that never quite lifted you. You weren’t ready. Or maybe you were, and that’s what scared you.

You follow the path, letting instinct take over. Past the lilac bush blooming defiantly out of season, past the bent metal bench where someone carved initials into the armrest with a key. You wonder if they’re still together. Probably not. But that doesn’t make it sad—just true.

Love, like migration, is seasonal. We arrive. We stay. And eventually, we go.

A flash of something—bark, shadow, possibility.. You pause beneath an old tree that’s seen more breakups and reconciliations than you ever will. It stands with the quiet confidence of things that remain while everything else changes. You stand with it, searching.

Not just for the cache. For yourself. For the version of you that let go and left, and the one who came back not to stay, but to remember.

You smile. You’re not here to pin anything down. Not love. Not identity. Not even this cache.

You’re here to notice.

To mark the moment.

To celebrate the truth that you, like the song, are flight made sound—transient, wild, and fully alive.

And with that, you move on. The find? Oh, it’s there. Waiting. Nestled just out of sight.

But like all good stories, this one isn’t about the container.

It’s about the wings.