The Last of the Winter
April 24, 2007 | 10:39 pm
Here in New England, we say that with some hesitation, some trepidation. You never know.
But we went geocaching in the woods of New Boston, New Hampshire, on Saturday, wearing t-shirts, and came across bits of snow and ice still holding out (one has to remember that it snowed here a mere week and a half ago!). In fact, Paul and Jacob made it a point to pelt me and Anastasia with snowballs!
Came across this stream with ice hovering over it. Very strange, very beautiful.
It was a trail of geocaches, sometimes called a power trail: we picked up eight of them on two-mile hike. Beautiful woods, beautiful day, only one DNF (did not find). I’m going into a few weeks of intense work: travel next week to Quebec to write about icebreakers there, then covering a conference on bioethics in Boston the following week; and in June I’m heading to Bucharest to promote a book … so this may be it for family geocaching for a while. I’m glad that the “last” one was such a great one!
– Jeannette Cézanne
Posted by: — jcezanne
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She Comes in Colors Everywhere
April 18, 2007 | 3:39 pm
Isn’t it amazing what color can do for your mood. Fo a long time, I was not posting in my personal blog, because I did not like the color of its layout. I just discovered that I can change it. Take a look:
http://www.snowgoddess.blogspot.com
NOw I am once again excited about writing! The next time you feel bored with some aspect of your life, consider changing the colors of your surroundings!
Posted by: — lmercer
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Signature Items
| 8:07 am
Many geocachers have what are called “signature items,” special trinkets that they leave in every cache they visit and log.
One of the people interviewed for my book, Mary Votava (check out how gorgeous this woman is at maryvotava.org) both leaves her own (handmade!) signature item *and* generally picks up only signature items from other caches.
And, true to human nature, there are people on the geocaching forums who complain that they hate signature items and that it’s all a big ego trip.
Me? I admire people who have the organization and energy to leave signature items in caches. I’ve often *thought* about it (ah, that deadly “I’ll think about it!”) and never taken the extra step to doing it. I’d probably buy a lot of small buddha statues and leave a buddha everywhere I go, that *has* to be good karma! But somewhere between inspiration and action my plan usually fails.
Which is the story of all the great has-beens, the ideas that didn’t quite make it, the opportunities never seized. We all just think about hw wonderful it would be if we could do such-and-such, and never “get around to” doing it. And almost invariably look back and say, “if only.”
I’ve got a lot of really good reasons for not following through on my signature item idea. Work tends to get in the way of recreation, sometimes, much as I wish it wouldn’t. Cash flow sometimes dictates frugality when I’m planning the monthly budget, and buying something in bulk can be a big-ticket sort of expenditure. And when my stepchildren are here, far too infrequently, we usually spend our time together doing things, not planning out what to do with future geocaches.
But when the reasons not to “get around” to doing something keep one incapacitated, one has to wonder at the end of the day whether one ever really intended to do it at all. After all, I coul have been looking at prices for buddhas on the web instead of writing this blog this morning!
Hmm. Way too much philosophy here. Think I’ll go get a coffee and think about what not to do next….
– Jeannette Cézanne
Posted by: — jcezanne
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All the News That’s Fit to Print!
April 17, 2007 | 8:55 pm
I just became the fitness editor for Qwickly.com. I will be writing about seven articles a week, so check back often. You can read the first three articles here:
http://www.qwickly.com/author/lisamercer/
Enjoy!
Posted by: — lmercer
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Traveling to Play
April 16, 2007 | 11:43 pm
My home ski resort, Copper Mountain here in Colorado, closed this past Sunday with an 80″ base, as deep as it’s been all season. The resort closes not because it doesn’t have enough snow, but because people stop skiing in the spring as they anticipate summer activities like golf and tennis. A couple resorts are still open, but soon it will only be Arapahoe Basin, which is likely to be open into June.
But, I won’t be skiing here again in April. Instead, I’m traveling. On Wednesday (my birthday!) I’ll be on a plane headed half-way around the world to ski with a group of people I’ve never met: the snowHeads from www.snowHeads.com, a UK skiing web site. I’ll be joining them for their End of Season Bash at Val Thorens in France, and enjoying the spring conditions high in the Alps. I’m traveling to play.
Part of the reason that I’m traveling is that they invited me to come based on my various on-line conversations with them. Part of the reason is for the new experiences. And part of the reason is to add a few more stories to the pages of the manuscript as I finalize it.
I love new experiences, don’t you? Opportunities to see new places, meet new people, see new sights, and live new adventures. It reminds me that I’m alive.
What are you doing?
Let’s go!
Posted by: — Stephen Hultquist
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They Don’t Behave The Way You Want Them To
April 11, 2007 | 9:12 am
This isn’t a geocaching lesson; it’s a life-lesson. Which is, I suppose, what my book really is about – how to take what one learns geocaching and apply it to life.
Today’s lesson, then, comes from the geocaching forums (or fora, as one of my colleagues insists – correctly – on calling them). I’ve been very active on the forums since I wrote the book: having it in my signature line is free advertising, and so I’ve tried to make thoughtful posts, at least one every day.
And the things one sees …
There’s something odd about the Internet: its very anonymity can really encourage people to behave badly. We’ve all seen the recent brouhaha over the scary threats in IT professional Kathy Sierra’s blog; we’ve all seen “trolls,” people who say rude or nasty things just to get a reaction. And the geocaching forums are no exceptions.
The thread had an innocuous title: What Do You Take With You? And I was delighted to enter the conversation: it’s an ongoing topic — how much gear do you need? What’s useful to carry? What’s just deadweight?
And then I realized that when they were calling the gear “arsenal,” they were serious. These people are taking *handguns* into the woods with them.
Never mind whether or not you think that owning a handgun is a Good Thing. Let’s talk sense: a handgun isn’t going to stop a bear. It’s going to annoy the bear. It’s going to make the bear want to hurt you back. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to give a bear any additional reasons for wanting to hurt me.
And then there’s my personal aversion to handguns, and my sense that I’m not sure I want to belong to a group that thinks it’s okay to carry them. Which brings us back to my original point: no matter what group you belong to, people in that group will often exhibit behavior or make statements with which you do not agree. Sometimes you really disagree strongly, in fact, with what they say or do.
Am I going to change them? Not a chance.
I decided not to enter the conversation. It’s an old, old argument, and one that will never be resolved. As my husband Paul often says, “it will end in tears.” People make outrageous statements and then sit back and enjoy the fun of watching people rise to the bait. So I went off and helped a high school student decide how to write a paper on geocaching instead.
My conclusion? Don’t feed the trolls.
Here endeth the lesson.
– Jeannette Cezanne
Posted by: — jcezanne
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You Miss it When it’s Gone
April 4, 2007 | 10:00 am
I’m back in New Hampshire now from my second home in Provincetown, and haven’t been geocaching since I’ve been back. It’s a busy time: we completed our first-ever book promotional video for OYH_Geocaching (we’ll probably look at it years from now and cringe because we’ve gotten better, but for now I’m pretty happy with it); I’m speaking at a conference in New York next week; I have another book deadline looming. All this has meant that every spare bit of time has been spoken for – so no geocaching for me.
I didnt realize just what a de-stressor it is until I stopped doing it, no matter how temporarily.
I may be sounding like a broken record here, but the reality is that there’s nothing like being in the woods, or in the dunes, to restore a sense of one’s place in the world. Miracles both large and small abound in nature, and feeling and seeing and hearing and smelling them all is liberating. The rising sense of panic that I sometimes experience when I look at my to-do list evaporates silently once I’m outdoors; peace is restored.
You don’t have to geocache to discover that peace and rid yourself of that panic, of course. A hike works. I suspect that many of the activities in the Open Your Heart series work. It’s a good reminder to all of us to keep doing whatever it is that opens our hearts, keep doing it regularly, so that we can keep touching that peace and that magic.
– Jeannette Cezanne
Posted by: — jcezanne
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