I haven’t been geocaching much recently — a terrible admission from someone who wrote the book on it! — mostly because of either bad timing or bad weather; but it’s never far from my mind.
In fact, I’m planning the placement of my next cache as we speak!
I’m teaming up with a fellow cacher (and history enthusiast), “MuchAdo,” to put together a cache that will take participants on a tour of Manchester, New Hampshire. But wait, those of you who have read my book are saying, isn’t that already one of your caches? Indeed it is: Dark Satanic does take cachers on a tour of Manchester’s mill history. This is a different sort of tour.
It’s a tour of places that are no longer there.
Manchester has a plethora of them: the old zoo, washed away in a flood; the grand hotel with tram access, gone with the passing of the era of grand hotels; the city jail, of which only the doorway remains; and many, many more places. And as MuchAdo and I work with the concept – mostly done over microbrews at Millie’s – I keep wondering about all the other ruins, all the other lost places in all of our communities, the places that once were important to people who used to live where we live now.
What is the point in keeping up with them? Why should these places mean anything to us now?
It’s a little like families, I think. We may not be our pasts, but our pasts are part of who we are. Just as we inherited our families’ DNA, we inherit the stories of the places where we live. Remembering them will keep them alive; and maybe we owe that to our communities, to our history.
What are the lost places in your community?
– Jeannette Cézanne
http://www.JeannetteCezanne.com
Posted by: Geocaching, Opening the heart, Learning something new, Joy — jcezanne
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