Flashes of Panic

Clearing out some of the email that had stacked up in my inbox during the last push, I came to one from an Amherst area geocacher who was also prominently featured in the Hampshire Life story a few months ago. Since last summer, he and I had been discussing potential maintenance on my two caches out there. I’d been hanging on to them out of some kind of sentimentality, but after the last few weeks I faced up to the fact that it would be weeks, at best, before I could attend to any problems with either hide. They needed to “belong” to someone who could take care of them.

So today I “put them up for adoption.” The geocaching.com site has a facility for offering ownership of a cache to another user, and I spent two minutes putting Bub’s cache and the Misty Bottom cache up for adoption. They’re not mine anymore, probably for their own good, but it’s still a bit tough to give them up.

It is gratifying to see the number of people who’ve visited both hides, and their comments. Misty Bottom, in particular, is one of my favorite places in all of Amherst, and it’s a lift to read the comments from all the people who went down there to find a box, and found a hidden little natural place as well.

Now Playing: Basement Home by Jesse Malin