Okay, I had to address it at some point. I received an email from a friend whose son (at my suggestion) has started geocaching. She wrote to me recently, “Elder son, when we drive around, points to various spots and tells me where he’s found a geocache and what was in it. So many places in ordinary spots!”

Well, yeah, that can be true. Because geocaching (perhaps like any human endeavor) is a community of people with disparate needs, likes, goals, and so on, there are those who will “play the game” differently than others. In Open Your Heart with Geocaching, I’ve highlighted what I love about the hobby – as the author, have that prerogative. I love the caches in beautiful places, the walks in the woods, the moments of perfect beauty.

Does that mean that all geocaches are in beautiful places? Not a bit of it.

For many people, geocaching is a highly competitive activity. They want to set records and record numbers. The most caches found in a day. The most caches “cleared” (found) within a certain radius of their homes. The most caches found in a given city. The most caches placed on a day or in an area. You get the picture.

These people aren’t in it to “look up,” as I urge readers of my book to do. They don’t want hikes through woods or to take the time to watch a hawk in flight. They’re in it for something completely different. Is it a worse way to geocache? Of course not: it’s just different.

But disagreements over what is the “correct” way to geocache run through the community like wildfire, and sometimes it’s difficult to parse the emotions from the reality. Many whose preferences are similar to mine have even found a term for the caches placed and found by the numbers people: “lame micros.”

Micro-caches are small, often the size of an old film canister or even smaller, and contain only a logbook. They can be located anywhere, including lightposts in a Wal*Mart parking lot (which is, not coincidentally, where they are the most frequently found): they can be found, grabbed, and recorded quickly on the way to the next one. Many people love them. Many people hate them. C’est la vie.

I told my friend Barbara that the joy is about which caches one chooses to go after. I don’t like “lame micros,” so I just don’t pursue them (the cache page at geocaching.com contains enough information for one to realize what sort of cache one is dealing with). I also don’t waste a lot of time decrying them. Someone likes them, or they wouldn’t be there. I don’t have to like them. I don’t even have to acknowledge them. Just as they don’t have to acknowledge my own favorite mystery caches.

As with most of life, it’s all about how you play the game.

– Jeannette Cézanne
Open Your Heart with Geocaching