This Month:
By Wayne Werne
Although familiar with geocaching and inclined toward outdoor activities, I am not personally a geocacher. I work in the field of natural resource management on Harrison Crawford State Forest in southern Indiana. Most of what I do relates to forestry work such as inventorying forest tracts, writing management plans, marking timber sales, administrating sales, and working with various aspects of tree plantations. We also work with wildlife management, prescribed burning, and cultural and archaeological sites on the property.
One day in the summer of 2003, I was working in a forest tract on our state property marking certain trees for a selective timber harvest in an area that had last been selectively harvested in the 1970’s. This particular tract overlooks the Ohio River and borders a series of cliffs known to contain populations of the rare eastern woodrat. This tract also has numerous hiking and horse trails running through it. On that day, I saw three people coming up the trail, which turned out to be two geocachers and our seasonal naturalist.
It seems that the two fellows were looking for a geocache in the area not too far away, and had crossed paths with our seasonal naturalist who thought that the whole concept sounded intriguing. They agreed to take him along, and after their encounter with me, they continued on up the trail to attempt to find their objective.
Fast forward to the winter of 2003/2004.Fast forward to the winter of 2003/2004. I found myself back in this particular forest tract with a GPS of my own on a quest to delineate the timber sale boundary that I had marked the previous summer. Additionally, I was using the GPS to delineate the small openings that sometimes get created in timber sale areas through the marking process that are referred to as regeneration openings by those in field of forestry. These are small areas where all the trees are marked because the overstory trees have extensive defect or damage, and removing them all at once will allow for a new crop of healthy, vigorous seedlings to take their place.
Since the leaves were now off of the trees, I was able to get adequate reception with our somewhat dated Trimble GPS unit. As I made my way from one opening to the next, I spied something hidden in the trunk of a hollow beech tree that had died and fallen over. Curious about it, I investigated to find a Tupperware container with a geocache inside. Opening it up, I saw the notebook log, a disposable camera, and a variety of trinkets inside. Reading the log, I found out that it was originally placed in 2001, and had had several geocachers visit to add items of their own after taking one that was originally in the geocache.
By reading the log, I saw the name of our seasonal naturalist who had accompanied the two geocachers from the summer before when they had run across me by chance and ultimately found their quarry later in the day.I could not resist adding my own name to the logbook... I noticed that several of those who had visited the site had apparently had some trouble finding it either due to somewhat inaccurate GPS coordinates by the original geocacher, or by their own inaccurate GPS’s, or just because the thing was so well hidden that no one could see it.
I could not resist adding my own name to the logbook, my own GPS coordinates, and taking a self-portrait with the disposable camera. I also could not resist putting down some comment to the effect that all these people knew exactly where to look for the cache and had a hard time finding it while I wasn’t even looking for it and found it without even knowing it was there.
Also, considering the fact that I was doing forest management in the particular tract that happened to contain a geocache, I felt obligated to put some forestry trivia in the logbook for any subsequent geocachers that might visit the site in the future. As it turned out, the fallen beech that contained the cache also happened to be in an area that had grown up with an exotic tree species known as ailanthus or tree-of-heaven. Unfortunately tree-of-heaven is anything but. It is an exotic tree introduced from China in the 1700’s, and much like other exotic species that have been introduced over the years like starlings, Norway rats, and kudzu, it has expanded its range and outcompeted the native species present.
As we have found out in recent years, ailanthus is a very aggressive tree that will outgrow native tree species and is also a prolific seeder that can produce tens of thousands of seeds and new seedlings every year. Unfortunately, this tree is most common along the Ohio River corridor, and this forest tract borders the Ohio River. Consequently, we have adopted a strategy of banding any such trees we find with pink or orange paint so that a follow-up crew of laborers can cut them down and treat the stumps with an appropriate herbicide so that they do not resprout and take over an area.
...I briefly explained this little lesson on the ecosystem in the logbook.The area with the geocache had been thus treated with numerous sapling size ailanthus trees banded with red and pink paint, and subsequently cut down to stem the tide of the invading hordes. Figuring that any geocacher might wonder what was going on, I briefly explained this little lesson on the ecosystem in the logbook.
Not being a geocacher, I have to wonder what the shelf life of a cache might be. The particular one I had found had apparently had some leakage, as the logbook was a bit moldy and damp, as were the other paper products inside. There was also a shelf fungus growing off of the cover as if it was part of the log. I wondered if the dampness had affected the film in the camera, or if there came a point where the cache was considered no good anymore and got replaced (trash the cache).
I suppose that I will have to stumble around in the woods some more so I can find those without looking too.Subsequent reporting of this story to our property manager revealed the fact that he had seen or heard information to the effect that there were numerous other caches that had been placed on various sites within the 26,000 acres that make up our forest. Not surprising considering such a large public property is available less than an hour from the Louisville area. I suppose that I will have to stumble around in the woods some more so I can find those without looking too.