In the world of geocaching, there is a sort-of police force: the “approvers” to whom one sends one’s caches and who, hopefully, approve them and enable them to go online at geocaching.com and therefore be discovered by other geocachers.
It’s a volunteer position. And it’s a position I wouldn’t take for all the tea in China. Why? Because human nature being what it is, everyone has something to complain about, and it’s the approver who gets the brunt of the complaints. People complain because a cache wasn’t approved. Other people complain because certain caches were approved. One cannot win.
However, it is also a tremendous honor to be asked to become an approver. One has to be known in the geocaching world, be seen as fair and a good judge and level-headed. Many aspire to the position, but in general the very desire to be approver cancels out one’s eligibility.
Just as we were moving away from New Hampshire, the then-approver resigned and a new one was chosen. I couldn’t have been more delighted with the choice: the new approver is a friend and fellow geocacher called Hockey Puck (guess what other activity he enjoys). But there are good reasons to be pleased about his appointment. One is, of course, that he liked my book, Open Your Heart with Geocaching (see his review here — scroll down to Trevor Pope); but another is that he has used geocaching in a most extraordinary way to help him through a bad time.
A couple of years ago, Trevor was diagnosed with cancer and started driving down to Mass General in Boston for treatments twice a week. It was a very stressful time, and instead of spending his commute to the hospital worrying about his health and his treatments, he used it to figure out the puzzle caches set out by my spouse, Paul, famous as NotThePainter for very difficult puzzles. Trevor would mull over them and often find the solution even as he battled his cancer.
It’s a wonderful story, and one that even has a happy ending: the cancer is in remission, and Trevor has been honored by being selected as New Hampshire’s new cache approver. He has compassion and intelligence, and there couldn’t have been a better choice.
РJeannette C̩zanne
www.JeannetteCezanne.com
Posted by: Opening the heart — jcezanne
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