Published: May 05, 2009 04:46 pm      

RANDOM THOUGHTS: Look for Sims on "Early Show"

For all those fans of Michael Sims, Crossville’s very successful author, he will be a guest on the CBS “Early Show” tomorrow morning. He will be talking about his new National Geographic book In the Womb: Animals and a new documentary by the same name which will be aired on Mother’s Day. Tomorrow, May 7, you can start your day with Michael Sims.

When I was a little kid it was called a treasure hunt. By the time I became a teenager it was a scavenger hunt. Years passed and now my great grandchildren are all excited about geocaching. This outdoor treasure hunt is shared with their parents and is not a simple just find a list of things. Oh no, this is a high-tech activity.

Those taking part need to visit a Web site such as www.geocaching.com to locate a cache. There they find clues about the location as well as the latitude and longitude of the hidden treasure. This information is transferred to a handheld Global Positioning System and the hunt begins. Once those coordinates are transferred to the GPS unit the receiver connects with a network of satellites orbiting the Earth and the hunter’s location is established. Next the GPS shows which direction to take to find the cache.

The first version of this fun activity began in England in 1854. A national park guide put his calling card in a bottle and left it at a lake in the park. He added a note to those finding it to add their card. They did and he received many responses in his mailbox too. The British term for that receptacle is letterbox and this new popular outdoor activity was named letterboxing.

It was an article in Smithsonian magazine in 1998 that caught the imagination of Americans and letterboxing became popular here. In a short time it moved from letterboxing to geocaching.

The fun is all in the hunt because once the cache is found the treasure is insignificant. Often it is a tiny plastic toy. If the finder takes what is in the container they must replace it with something else. The best part of the game is leaving your name and address in the log book and carefully replacing the cache for someone else to find. Often there is a paper explaining the cache in case a non-geocacher finds it. Those in the know call these people muggles, borrowed from the Harry Potter books.

Amazingly this worldwide game of hide and seek is played in over 100 countries on all seven continents, including Antarctica and in all 50 states in the USA. There is a Middle Tennessee Geocachers Club at www.mtgc.org. It is estimated that there are almost 800,000 caches hidden worldwide. Hikers are big fans of the game and many of the finds are in natural beauty areas or historical and cultural places. Even rock climbers and scuba divers take part in the game and their caches require special skills to find.

The geocachers ethical creed states others should not be endangered, there should be minimal impact on nature, private property should be respected and public alarm should be avoided. The sport should be safe, legal and ethical.

One of the most noteworthy and exemplary qualities of the game is that it is a parent-child experience. What could be better than a family enjoying hours together in the great outdoors?