This month:

• Where Do We Go? by Jerry Carter
• DNF by Richard Niles

Back in June of 2001 when I first started caching, there were five cachers in the area. This included myself and my wife. One of the biggest goals of hiding a cache was to take people to unique or interesting places that they might not otherwise visit. At that time, our part of the state was pretty much our playground. We had overwhelming choices of where to place a cache. If you went back and read the early logs of some of the first caches, you would notice that a lot of them stated, "Nice park, or nice trail. I didn't know this place was here." Not so today. Now, if you read the logs, you will find a lot of them saying, "Thanks for the hunt. TNLN." Why? Because there are no interesting places to go, mainly. The early cachers have taken up most of the prime real estate, and won't give it up. Why is that?

The early caches have been logged by most of the locals, and only the new players are logging them now. This means that caches, when first placed in a nice park or on a good hiking trail, were logged by many in the first couple of months, but are now logged only occasionally. The owners of those caches will argue the reason they don't archive them and open up the area to a new cache is because,"It's a good cache and it's in an area I want people to visit." Well now, that's all well and good, but let me ask you this. How many people have been back to that area? I'll venture a guess and say very few. Most are out looking for new caches, and since you won't give up the area, and there are no new caches in that area, they're not coming back.

People who came into this sport a year or two after it started want to participate. They want to hide caches as well, but where? All the places people want to go are already taken. So, what do they do? They hide lame caches that we all complain about and criticize them for. Who's to blame for this? Not the new people. They just want to participate and get the same joy of hiding a cache, and to know someone's logging it, just like us old-timers.

Why not archive your caches that are seldom-logged or have been logged by the majority of the locals, and make room for new caches? The new people would have a place to hide caches, and the old-timers would have a new cache to hunt in a area that they love so much. You can move a cache 100 feet and have a brand new hunt!In summary, there should be a time limit on caches...the cache owner can decide when that time arrives...the cache owner has to step up and lead by example. I won't even get into the issues of how this would help the environment, since we all have different opinions on that subject.

You have to have the foresight to look into the future and see where this is leading. It won't be long before no one is hiding a cache because there is no place to put one, and no one is hunting a cache, because they have already found all of them. We will be the death of our own passion. This sounds radical and farfetched for most of you, but think about it. How much has geocaching grown since you started? I guess the best question at this point is, how much more can it grow without people making room for new caches?

In summary, let me say this. Do I believe there should be a time limit on caches? Yes. Do I believe there should be an official time limit? No. Every cache and every area is different. There are caches that have been there for years that aren't a problem. On the other hand, there are caches that have out lived their usefulness. Only the cache owner can decide when that time arrives. It is also the cache owner that has to step up and lead by example.