This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.
The original was posted on /r/geocaching by /u/wowieann on 2025-05-30 20:18:48+00:00.
This is the story of why I don’t go Geocaching in the woods by myself at night anymore.
It’s my favorite Geocaching story to tell. And what’s more, it’s all true! I can’t make this stuff up!
Also - it’s weird to read back through it and remember that my GPSr (Global Positioning System receiver), cell phone, and digital camera were three separate devices back then. Ah, 2006!
—-
I had been Geocaching for a couple of months and still had a bad case of First-to-Find Fever. So when I saw a nearby cache post in the middle of the night in May of 2006, I decided to go for it.
The map on the cache page showed that the cache was behind a Kroger a few miles from my house.
I drove to the Kroger and parked in their well-lit parking lot because I’m safety-conscious like that.
My GPSr indicated that the cache was only two hundred feet away. It was in a wooded area, but I had my flashlight, so I was sure I’d be fine.
Normally I carry a canvas Geocaching bag containing everything I might need while looking for a cache. But seeing as this cache was “only” two hundred feet from my car, I didn’t bother with my caching bag. Instead, I grabbed a plastic grocery bag and threw in a few things I thought I might need: a pen, some “signature cards” with my caching info on them, some swag to leave in the cache, a tiny can of mosquito repellant, my camera, my cell phone, and my car keys.
Due to the hour (and my uncanny ability to always pick the hardest way in) I didn’t see the path. I crossed a ditch and was working my way through the trees when I heard voices.
My first thought was that other cachers had beaten me to the cache. I figured I could sneak up on them, jump out from behind some trees, and “congratulate” them on their find. But when I listened closer, I realized what I was hearing was actually a radio.
I thought it must be some clever scheme of the couple that had hidden the cache. Caches have all sorts of fun and original gimmicks to them, so it never occurred to me to wonder why there would be a radio at a cache site in the woods.
I was curious to see what purpose the radio served, so I plunged on in the direction of the sound.
There was some incredibly dense foliage between where I was and where the sound was coming from, but I figured if the cache hiders could get through it, I could too.
I put my head down and began “bulldozing” my way through the brush. “Bulldozing” is similar to “bushwhacking”, only it’s done while holding a plastic bag of Geocaching gear and swag in one hand, and a GPSr and flashlight in the other.
It’s also done without any concern for bodily injury or damage/loss to what one may (or may not) be carrying.
—-
Suddenly, the radio shut off. I grumbled to myself about how rotten the timing was that the radio should run out of batteries at that point. (Clearly, the foliage wasn’t the only thing out there that was “incredibly dense”.)
I came crashing through the trees and into a clearing of sorts - if by “clearing” you mean “an area mostly devoid of trees but heaped with mounds of garbage”.
I shined my light on it, hoping the cache wasn’t amongst the garbage, and thinking that the area could use some serious clean-up.
A little to the right of the mountain of garbage, my beam fell on what appeared to be a giant mattress. That in itself was not alarming; it wasn’t the first (or last) discarded mattress I’d seen while out Geocaching. Only on closer inspection, it wasn’t a mattress. It was the side of a tent.
A light came on inside the tent, and I realized that whoever was in the tent knew I was out there.
All sorts of horrible scenarios ran through my head, and I tried to quickly think - should I turn my flashlight off and try to back slowly out of there? And if I did try to sneak away, was there any way to do so without making as much of a ruckus leaving as I did coming in? And how would I see without the light from my flashlight? But how could I prevent whoever was in the tent from knowing exactly where I was if I turned my flashlight on?
As I stood there deliberating, a male voice from inside the tent said, “Who’s out there??”
—-
(This is the point at which any SANE person would have said, “Sorry, I’ve made a mistake, I’m leaving now!” Which is what I opened my mouth to say. But what came out instead was, “Who’s in THERE?”)
There was a pause, after which the voice answered “I LIVE here!”
—-
For some reason, this caught me completely by surprise. I’m not sure where I thought homeless people lived before that point. I guess my surprise must have been evident in my muttered apology for the intrusion. He asked how I managed to find his campsite, seeing as he’d lived there for several years, undetected.
I started to explain a little about Geocaching, but before I could say much he interrupted to ask if I was using “one of those radio transmitters to find hidden containers”.
I told him that was exactly what I was doing, only it was a GPSr I was using rather than a radio transmitter. He said that they’d always used radio transmitters when they’d played the game back in his days at Texas A&M.
I don’t know whether I was more shocked by his claim to have been an Aggie, or the fact that he alleged to have participated in some early form of Geocaching! Giddy with relief that this guy didn’t seem to pose a threat to me, I exclaimed, “You’re an Aggie? Me too!”
He went on to tell me that he’d had some health problems followed by a divorce, and that he’d fallen on hard times. I’d just been through a divorce myself, and said something to him to that effect. So there I was, bonding with a homeless stranger in the woods in the middle of the night.
He told me to wait (while he put on some pants) so he could help me find the cache.
The slightest bit of sense returned to me at that point, and I started to tell him thanks, but no thanks, that I was leaving. But then I remembered he probably knew the woods so well that he could catch up to me if he wanted to.
So, mustering all the bravado that I could, I told him that I was prepared to hurt him if he tried anything. (Yeah. I could have “maced” him with my trial-sized can of aerosol mosquito repellant. Or not, as I was soon to find out myself.)
I was expecting to see some half-starved dirt-encrusted fellow with a beard past his knees, but the guy that emerged from the tent was clean cut and looked incredibly normal. He introduced himself as “Billy”. I introduced myself, and we began hunting for the cache.
It wasn’t a quick find, in the dark. It probably took us half an hour at least - during which time we chatted. He had quite the setup out there! A mirror strapped to a tree served as a grooming station, of sorts. He had a razor holder attached as well, with razors and other toiletries in it. I was impressed! We eventually found the cache beside one of his “toilet” trees. Joy.
Still, I was delighted to find the cache, although a bit disappointed to see that I wasn’t the first-to-find. How the first finders had managed to come and go without Billy noticing them, I’ll never know. The cache was a mere sixty feet from his campsite!
This is where things get even more surreal (if that’s even possible).
I have this little ADD/OCD cache-ritual that often frustrates people I cache with. I ALWAYS photograph the cache, my entry in the logbook, etc. So having signed the log (I offered to let Billy sign it as well, but he declined) I went to take out my camera. Only it wasn’t in the plastic bag I’d brought along. All I found in my plastic bag was a camera-sized hole.
So there I was, out in the woods with a homeless man in the middle of the night, and it appeared that my camera had escaped from the plastic bag I was carrying.
Predictably, the bag had torn, and my camera was nowhere to be found.
Now, if this had been a disposable camera (those were still kind of a thing back in the days before cell phones had cameras) it would have been no big deal.
But this was a three-hundred-dollar digital camera. And I was NOT leaving the woods without it if I could help it. I explained my dilemma to Billy, and he helped me search.
—-
If you think looking for an ammo can or plastic container in the woods is difficult, try looking for a palm-sized digital camera!
After searching for about an hour, unsuccessfully, I decided to call a friend to ask for help.
This friend had a spotlight, a keen eye, and most importantly, didn’t mind receiving middle-of-the-night phone calls from friends in the woods.
It was then that I had the sickening realization that my cell phone had been in the plastic bag along with my camera.
—-
We searched for a little longer. I was nearly in tears at this point, desperate to find my stuff, and asking myself how I could have gotten myself into this mess.
Billy was incredibly patient and helpful. We scoured the area where I’d earlier come crashing through the trees, figuring that would be the most likely place to have ripped my bag - but no luck. At this point it occurred to me that if I could CALL my cell phone, I might be able to hear it ring. Only I couldn’t call my cell phone, as I didn’t HAVE my cell phone.
Billy suggested I walk back down to the Kroger and use the pay phone to call my cell. That way, he could stay and search for it while I called it repeatedly. Brilliant! I went to fish out my car keys so I could get some quarters out of my car. But… you guessed it. My keys had been in the bag along with everything else, and now they were ...
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