What in the world is geocaching?

I haven't written in a while, largely because much of my free time has been taken up by my new hobby, geocaching. One of my first posts was about geocaching, but I did not explain what it is. I just assumed that most people had some exposure to the sport. I don't know why I assumed that, since I did not know much about geocaching or how to go about it until I was practically forced to do it for my job. The reaction I get from most people when I tell them I geocache is the a puzzled look and the questions, "What in the world is geocaching?"

Well, had the question been, "Where in the world is geocaching?", the answer would have been everywere! Geocaching is like a high-tech treasure hunt, and the "treasure" is hidden all around the world. Some is probably closer to your home than you think! But, prospectors, don't quit your day job yet--this "treasure" has little to no monetary value. The majority of the "treasure" is composed of kids' meal toys, small trinkets, and coupons hidden in tupperware containers and ammo boxes. The real "treasure" is the experience of hunting for a cache.

Before I go too far, it would be useful to explain how geocaching got its beginnings. In the not too distant past (sometime in the 90s), GIS data became available to the general public. Before this point it had only been available to the U.S. government. This data uses satellites in order to pinpoint exact locations on the globe. Not too long after this data became available to the public, a man in Oregon hid a tupperware container with a log book and posted the coordinates for this book online, challenging others to find it using their handheld GPS systems. It did not take long for the the sport to catch on. The hidden "treasures," called caches, began to spring up all over the place. For simplicity's sake, someone decided to concentrate all of the coordinates on a website called geocaching.com. This is still the foremost website for geocaching.

So that is how geocaching began, and today it seems to be flourishing more than ever. There is much more to explain about geocaching, but, in my experience, it is one of those things that can be explained until I turn blue in the face without sounding very interesting. Geocaching is kind of like travelling. It just cannot be explained in a way that gives it justice, and people cannot fully understand the joys of it unless they does it themselves.

In my next post I will touch on a few of my recent geocaching experiences and explain why I like it so much. In the meantime, I would encourage anyone reading this to go to geocaching.com and see how many caches are within 10 miles of your zipcode. You will be surprised! And, if you have a handheld GPS or know someone who does, perhaps you can give this a try. I want to hear about others' amazing geocaching experiences!

Now I'm tired

Today I went canoeing with my mom, my dad, and my brother Matt. We did a really hard route with many logs in the way. Between my mom hyperventilating from fear and my dad telling me to paddle, then not to paddle, in five second intervals, it was an exhausting day.

I just want to share a quick anecdotal story that occurred a few days ago at a fishing clinic I was teaching. We were playing a game in which most of the kids were northern pike fingerlings, and some were kingfishers, a type of bird that eats norhtern fingerlings. After one of the rounds, a little girl came up to me and said, "Teacher, one of the kingfishers didn't tag a boy because they were friends."

Not wanting to involve myself in this "life-isn't-fair" dispute, I shrugged and said, "Well, that's just the way it goes sometimes."

She thought about this a while, then said, "So you mean a kingfisher could become friends with a northern pike in real life?"

So many directions, so little time

I only have one year of college left, and it's getting to be that time when people expect that I know what I'm going to do when I get done. When I was a freshman, even a sophomore, it was okay to say, "I don't know. I'm just doing what I love, and I'll see what comes of it. I like to keep my options open." But now I get the feeling that people think I'm a total loser if I give an answer like that. I'm assuming that a lot of college students are in my same place.

I am majoring in Literature with a Writing Emphasis and minoring in Environmental Biology. I originally decided to major in Lit. with a Writing Emphasis because I love to read and write, and it is one of my strongest skills. I had the intention of becoming a middle school English teacher by going for a fifth year of college to get my Master's degree in Education. My desire to become a teacher arose largely from the fact that it is a career very compatible with raising a family. Then in the beginning of my sophomore year I began to see more and more that I had a passion for the outdoors and environmental issues. I decided to add an Environmental Biology minor, with the intention of pursuing a career in environmental writing.

Since then, almost all of my job experience has been in youth environmental education. I enjoy these jobs, but I'm still not sure if it's what I want to do for a career. I would really like to be able to incorporate my knowledge of English and writing into my career somehow. I have thought of all sorts of options: teaching English as a second language, scientific communications, speech language pathology, and environmental interpretation to name a few.

As of now I am pretty certain that I will go to grad school of some sort so that I can gain more of a speciality in whatever I do decide to go into. Keeping my options open has had its advantages. I feel like I am free to do whatever I set my mind to once I graduate, but this is also very scary. I have no idea where I'll be or what I'll be doing a year from now. This could be a great adventure or a great disaster, and I guess all I can do is hope and pray from the former.

The rest of my career and life may depend on decisions I make this year. I know I can always change my mind, and most people do end up going in several directions before they settle into something. I guess the part that is making this decision really hard is that I have nothing to tie me down. On one hand there is so much of the world I'd like to see; on the other hand, I feel that if I do not settle down in one place I will never form the human connections I need. On one hand I'd like to plan my future around raising a family someday; on the other hand, I can't plan my future around a hypothetical family.

A part of me wishes that I could just know a little bit of what the future will hold so that I could plan around that, but the other part of me, the deep down part, knows that would take all of the adventure out of living.

Teaching: I might actually be starting to enjoy it!

Today I taught a fishing clinic for a county 4-H group that I also worked with last year. Being at the same location and with some of the same kids and teen counselors as last year certainly brought back memories, and these memories were anything but fond. This was one of the first full-length fishing clinics that I taught last year, and I am willing to admit that I did a few things wrong. I was still in the process of discovering the ways in which I can best manage a group of 30 kids at a fishing clinic and still keep things fun and engaging. Of course, I am still partaking in this process, but I feel that I have come much further along. The spark that really ignited my desire to change my methods occurred at this very event last year. I had spent the whole day frazzled, unable to keep the group's attention, frustrated because we were off schedule, and disappointed because the kids didn't seem to be enjoying themselves. At the end of the day the kids filled out evaluations. One of the questions on those evaluations is "My instructor was really good at ____________." I remember going through those last year, and one child had filled in his blank with the word "yelling." This is when I knew something had to change. I could blame my attitude on the kids' misbehavior all I wanted, but the truth was that my approach to the fishing clinics needed to change. I did not wait to make these changes; in fact, they went into effect the very next day. I began to realize that it was not necessarily important to stay completely on schedule and squeeze in every activity. Although it is important to keep the programs educational, they also must be fun. The point of the fishing programs is to get kids into fishing, hopefully as a lifetime sport. If their early experiences with fishing are not fun, they will not have a desire to fish again. So I began to be more laid back in my approach to fishing clinics, allowing myself to change lesson plans to fit the dynamics of certain groups. I also began to treat the kids with the same respect that I expect from them, which I find really helps with group behavior issues. With these changes made, today's clinic went much more smoothly than the same clinic a year ago. I am now realizing that a personal teaching style is an evolving learning experience that can be tuned with each trial. As I develop my teaching style, I am beginning to enjoy teaching more and more. If you would have asked me last year at this time whether I enjoy teaching, I would have probably said, "Definitely not!" But today I actually did enjoy myself. And I am proud to say that all of my evaluations came back positive, with the blank that was filled with "yelling" last year filled with things like "explaining," "teaching," and "helping me" this year.

Kinda cute, kinda deep

As part of my summer internship I spend 20 hours each week travelling to various communities to lead fishing and aquatic ecology classes for kids. One of the dirtier parts of this job is putting worms on the kids' hooks. I always give a demonstration on how to do it and encourage kids to do it themselves. However, I do not want to turn kids away from fishing because they're forced to touch worms, so I'll do it for them if they want me to. Today there was a line of girls waiting to get their hooks baited, and one of the girls informed me that she kissed a worm once. "Really?!" I said, "Then you should be able to bait your own hook without a problem."

To that she responded, "No, I don't hurt things; I just kiss them. That doesn't hurt them." Then she paused for a moment, thinking, and asked, "Or does it?"

Just a little something to chuckle about and ponder for a while.

Geocaching: Just the adventure I was looking for!

Today as a part of my job as a naturalist intern at a state park, I learned to geocache. The park is a geocache demo-site for Minnesota State Parks' "Wildlife Safari" program, so it is necessary that I know how to operate the GPS units that we loan to park visitors.

I wasn't too excited about geocaching at first. I guess when people told me about it I just couldn't see what the big thrill to finding a plastic container in the woods would be. But I welcomed the chance to get outside on the trails and get paid for it. Then, to my surprise, I actually enjoyed myself. I found the cache quite easily, as there is a lot of traffic to it by park visitors. But I did feel a sense of reward that I did not think that I would feel.

I decided to look up more geocaching sites around my house, and I was surprised to see that there are 10 within a five mile radius. My brother Matt and I went out looking for the closest one after dinner. It was on state forest land, and it was hidden very well. Even though it was less than a mile away, it took us over an hour to find. It was a challenge, and we had a great time searching for it. Plus my brother traded a marble for a Batman pen, which made his day.

I think geocaching is just the adventure I've been looking for. It is something that I can do close to home after I get done with work, and it takes me to places I usually wouldn't go. Plus it gets me outdoors, which is always a top priority for me.

Writing Again

I haven't written much of anything since I returned from a semester of studying in Italy about two months ago. There have been a few times when the thought of continuing my blogging habit enticed me, but then I'd make excuses and put it off. "My life isn't as exciting anymore, who would want to read about it?" I would ask myself. Which, to some extent, is a valid question; after all, my life in Italy was packed full of adventure. But I have a feeling that most of my doubts about blogging were coming from the voice of reentry shock, as the one page mailing from the study abroad office informed me. The short version is this: for the next few weeks, months, or years you will want desperately to talk about your amazing study abroad experience, but, unfortunately, nobody will understand or even want to understand. You will be depressed and will want to return to Europe, but you must believe the yellow paper--these feelings shall subside with time. Well, the feelings haven't subsided quite yet for me. I still manage to bring up Italy in almost every conversation, and often times I feel like people just don't get it. But the other side of this is I know that if I was still in Italy I would be homesick for Minnesota. I guess it's just another case of the grass being greener on the other side, and as long as I'm on this side, I should try to make the best of it.

So here I go; I'm writing again. We shall see what comes of this. I'm hoping to write often enough to be able to focus on the little things that make each day an adventure. It is easy to blog about life's big events, but I want a challenge. This challenge will be giving the little things enough credence in my writing so that they too can seem big.