This Month:
A member of Team Hapenottokerho
Here in Finland the winter is long and really dark and cold. The nordic winter does not restrain geocaching but it makes some limits. Caches are harder to find if they are covered with snow. Sometimes the cache is frozen to it's place or covered with thick ice and it can be impossible to log it. But the biggest restriction lies between ones ears. A real nordic geocacher will always find a way to get to the cache despite the conditons!
Here in Finland the winter is long and really dark and cold.
In schools there is a -20°C "frost limit" when kids won't have to go out on break (but they may go if they want to). All the other time they have to go out and there are no excuses to avoid that. So it's normal for us Finns to go out despite the coldness. Here in Helsinki, the capital of Finland, the winter is even more depressing than in most other parts in Finland because we don't usually have much snow, and the city lies by the Baltic sea which causes really cold winds. So, it's cold, dark, windy, and often rainy. We Finns are perhaps a bit lunatic because we still go out searching for geocaches despite the awful conditions. And we enjoy it!
Our family started geocaching in October 2003, the month when days begin to get shorter and it's dark all the time. At the beginning it was nice autumn: a bit chilly but quite rainy. First few caches we found in the nice weather and we could enjoy the beautiful autumn colors. But then came the time to search caches in the rain, snow and the coldness. It was horrible and delightful at the same time.
The first cache found in the rain was a piece of cake because it was located in a very snug area but the second one was something that still gives me cold shivers. It was located in the end of a pier by the sea. The wind was really hard and it was so cold. We had to search the cache for a long time before finding it and once we were back in our car, we all were soaking wet and our fingers were frozen. Oh, how good the hot pea soup tasted that day!
The worst thing about caching in winter is to get your fingers frozen. It's pretty hard to sign the logbook and to get the container opened and closed when it's really cold and the fingers just won't work. Almost as bad as the coldness is the darkness. During the dark season, one gets more easily tired and going out is the last thing one could imagine to do after sun has got down (it does that at about 3pm). That's why we geocached mainly in the weekends during winter. Other cachers here seem to behave quite the same way.
At the moment (31.3.2004) it is spring. We moved to the daylight-saving time last sunday. Now geocaching seems a totally different intrest for us. We have been looking for caches after dinner on weekdays. It feels funny to go out after dinner but at the same time before our child's bedtime. Since the daylight and the nice weather are not self-evident to us, we truly can enjoy with all our hearts these kind of things. One could feel pity for us nordic cachers who must go in for geocaching during the awful winter. But, I think we are lucky because we have opportunity to have these great winter caching experiences and then comes the "summertime when the caching is easy". Winter is an enemy we can't fight against, so it's better to make it our friend. But let's not invite that friend for a visit for a while now ;)