By KAREN O’KEEFE | Member
While you may know me as Karen O’Keefe, technical writer, other people know me as “Snark-Hunter.” On my time off, I might be doing any of the following with Pompey, Ornith, 3muddogs, Amygems, Mtribe, or BBI Dragon:
- Playing poker
- Estimating the size of an extinct cinder cone
- Closely examining a bus stop shelter for hidden magnetic objects
- Trying to spot a salmon ladder in a natural area
- Translating a message from Navajo to English
- Solving a Sudoku puzzle
- Searching the woods for hidden Tupperware or an old ammunition canister
- Stealthily lifting up lamppost skirts
- Walking a labyrinth in a cathedral
- Lurking near a telephone pole while carrying exactly 67.6 fluid ounces of water
- Sitting on a park bench in Oregon while my sister in Idaho operates a nearby webcam via the Internet
- Cleaning up a local park
So, you might ask, am I some kind of government agent? A spy, perhaps? A detective? A scientist? Just crazy? Nope, I am a geocacher and I am one of tens of thousands of people in more than 200 countries around the world, and on all seven continents (including Antarctica), who use Global Positioning System technology in a sport called “geocaching.” In all of my examples, I was trying to “earn” the ability to log a “find” on geocaching.com. So far I have logged more than 300.
This begs the question, what is a “cache” and what do I find? A cache can be a container, an event, a geological formation, a landmark, and even a webcam photo. When the cache is a container, cachers trade stuff of various kinds. I once traded a lovely decorative coin for a souvenir from the Beijing Olympics, which I then traded for a stuffed animal with a mission to go to Hawaii. To find caches, I sometimes go online and download latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates to my GPS receiver and then set out to find them. At other times, I have to solve a puzzle to find the coordinates.
Although geocaching has been around for nearly 10 years, we are just starting to hear about it in TV shows and on the news. I learned about geocaching on my round-the-country trip last year and have been hooked ever since. I was happily surprised to find a sport that was ideal for technical communicators, who are generally technically savvy, excellent problem solvers, creative thinkers, and quick learners. I also love that geocaching is inclusive: some caches are wheelchair accessible, while others require the skills of a mountain climber. With more than a million caches in place around the world, there are plenty for everyone to find—and, in fact, if you go on geocaching.com right now, you may be surprised to find some in your neighborhood.
What does all this have to do with technical writing? I once took my boss caching at lunchtime, where we found a couple of caches within walking distance of the office. Our short outing gave us time to get to know one another while doing something fun. One day I planned a surprise geocaching activity for my writing team. I showed up for work with a picnic lunch, and we set out to find two nearby caches, which we couldn’t have found alone—it took concentrated teamwork and we all left feeling successful.
Geocaching offers many benefits to people like me:
- Exercising (walking with a purpose)
- Meeting new people
- Learning my way around town
- Honing my problem-solving skills
- Developing observational acuity
- Seeing places I never would have seen (like hidden waterfalls)
- Learning new ways of thinking and gaining a wide variety of knowledge
When I was interviewed recently on a geocaching-related podcast, I described geocaching as a “worldwide treasure-hunting game for techo-geeks.” If you want to hear that interview or learn more about geocaching, go to www.cacheamaniacs.com/index.php?post_id=602561 or www.geocaching.com.
So go ahead and call me Karen, but don’t be surprised if I also answer to Snark-Hunter (a nod to Lewis Carroll’s great poem The Hunting of the Snark). That just means I’m on an adventure.
