Trail Hound

Getting in touch with nature through technology

Getting in touch with nature through technology
A technological treasure hunt 

   ^{Four Ponds Bridge.}

It’s funny how an Internet post can lead you down a whole new path.  An out-of-state visitor on an online forum described a beautiful spot he discovered on a hiking trail along the West Reservoir in Harwich.  He described where to park, roughly how far to walk down the Rail Trail before heading off on a side path and which way to follow the winding trail.  At the targeted spot, there would be a small container holding a log book and trinkets hidden among the brush. 

The forum poster was talking about geocaching.  Geocaching is a worldwide treasure-hunt game in which small containers, called caches, are hidden and their navigational coordinates (that’s latitude and longitude) and a few other clues are posted online at geocaching.com.  Other geocachers search for the caches by plugging the coordinates into their handheld GPS receiver and following the trail.  Geocachers log their finds both in the cache and online, and if there are trinkets in the cache, they may trade one from the cache with one that they brought.

Thinking that a treasure hunt would be a good way to get my school-age children out of their electronic world for a while, we followed the poster’s directions.  I had never realized there was such a pathway and quiet shoreline, hidden from the roads and bike path, so nearby.  It took us a while to locate the spot – and find the cache – but then, we were navigating without GPS.  When my son yelled out, “Found it!” I knew we were hooked.  I marveled at how cool it was to be able to go online and find hundreds of thousands of hidden places to explore around the world, with dozens in my own back yard.  Billion-dollar technology brings us back to nature.

We hunted down a few more caches without using GPS, relying on clues from the cache’s listing and mustering all the map-reading and old-fashioned compass skills we could gather.  We discovered picturesque nooks in Brewster tucked behind Drummer Boy Park and overlooking Upper Mill Pond in the Punkhorn Parklands.  But we met our navigational match when we attempted a geocache in the backside of Nickerson Park.  The verbal clue was “Look for the ash tree.”  It took us two attempts, with a time-out for research on what differentiates an ash tree from all the others in the forest, to make the find.  I ordered a Garmin e-Trex Legend for $130 from Amazon shortly thereafter.

As a runner, I’ve sought out scenic trails through word of mouth and perusing town conservation maps.  I’ve tried to share my love of trails on walks with my family, but the kids dragged their feet at the idea of an aimless ramble.  Geocaching opened up a whole new world of hidden treasures.

This blog will be largely about those special places around the Cape.  As development carves into the woodlands and the pristine beaches are rapidly becoming off-road parking lots, our trails are an even more valuable oasis.  There will be talk of geocaching, which provides a marvelous tool to find these places, but also of just nice areas to walk, run, or sit and enjoy the view.  I invite you to share your favorite trails as well.

Above image (right): Colin running through the Provincetown dunes.