This might come as a surprise, but I’m not an emotional kind of guy.  I generally don’t get sappy, or melancholy, don’t suffer from road rage, get upset by coworkers or customers, and only rarely do I lose my temper.  I also don’t jump for joy or, or get giddy with excitement, those kind of things, although I do get quite animated when I’m teaching, especially when teaching pilots.

So it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that when my Dad died this last November, I didn’t have much outward emotional grief.  Yes, I cried at the funeral, but in the days following I wasn’t what you would call emotionally distraught.

On the outside.

Something was wrong, however.  I couldn’t put my finger on it, but I wasn’t right,,, somehow.  There was a giant hole there somewhere.  So one Sunday morning, I got up long before anyone else (normal for me on the weekend), and just left.  No, I wasn’t abandoning my family.  I just needed some time by myself.

It turned out I was on a Spirit Quest of sorts, although I didn’t know it at the time.  The weather was very nice, so I jumped on the Harley and pointed it down the road and twisted the throttle.  At the bottom of the hill, I turned East.   At 25^th street, I turned South.  I decided once I was on Hwy 75 southbound, that I was just going to go where impulse led me.  I felt like I would just ride a little while and then come home to continue on with life.  I reached the northern part of Plattsmouth, there’s an auto dealer there, and just past the auto dealer is a stop light.  Impulse sent me West at that point, and told me just to ride straight on.  I won’t bore you with everything that I saw, but it was a nice ride.  I came, at length, to a sign that read “Low Maintenance Road Ahead,” and stopped.  The road looked kind of rough,  There was a bridge ahead, and I was  considering ending my ride and going home.

While I was sitting there, engine idling, a good sized dog came trotted up toward me.  Now, if you ride, you know what’s going to happen next.  The dog is going to start barking and growling and letting you know that you and your loudness are not welcome.  That was not what happened.  She trotted up like she knew me and put her chin on my knee.  I have NEVER had a dog, other than my own, do that.  I pet her while I was still trying to make my decision, then she lifted her head, trotted over to the bridge, stopped and looked over her shoulder at me.

Well, I know a hint when I see one.  I slowly rode forward, following her lead across the bridge.  At the other side of the bridge, she stepped off to the side of the road, sat down and watched me.  I stopped, told her thanks, and then she trotted back across the bridge and was gone.

I sat there for probably another minute before I put the bike back into gear and headed up the hill.  Hey, it was kinda weird, and I knew it.  The going was slow.  Most of the road was, well, low maintenance, with deep ruts but a good flat strip that I could easily ride on.  At one point I was running about 45 miles an hour, but most of the time, about 15 to 20.  I came to a spot and had to stop.  I had to stop not because of the road, but because of the area.  I actually turned off the engine and got off of the bike, and marveled at how wonderful the area was.  I just sat down and enjoyed the silence for a while, noticing a little pond nearby, and a stand of trees, and other features of the land that we often ignore.  I got up, walked over to the Harley, and pushed the button on the GPSr, saving the waypoint(I have a mount on my handlebars for it).  I’m definitely coming back to this spot.  There’s something almost spiritual here.

Geocaching? Sorry, got kind of wordy there.  I’m coming to that.

After doing my little enjoying the world thing, I got back on the bike and headed down the road again, still not ready to head home.  That’s when it happened.  Well, honestly, I got back onto pavement, took a couple of turns, road down the road some more, and THAT’S when it happened.  A little treasure chest popped up on my screen.  A Geocache called my name, and I had to follow.   "Mopac," the name said under the little treasure.  The area that it led me to was a little parking lot by a trail, one of many.  There were power towers and the like, but what caught my attention was the little stand of trees there.  The needle on the GPSr was pointing into the trees.  I spent a moment standing there, looking at the stand of trees before I headed toward ground zero.  The place seemed familiar.  It made me think of when I was a kid, and Dad and I would go squirrel hunting.  It wasn’t the same kind of place where we hunted, but it felt like the same kind of place.  The cache was a fairly quick find, about 20 feet from where my gpsr said it should be, which was about normal.  After signing the log and rehiding the cache,  I sat there for a few minutes.  Back on the bike and down the road.  Another ‘cache loomed onto the screen, named “Goodbye, So Long.”  Hmm, I’m starting to think this isn’t a coincidence.  I found that one quickly (it was designed to be a quick find) and decided that since I was in the area, I’d get “Another Bridge, Another Metal Bridge.”  I normally spend too much time on caches like these.  I decided that I had plenty of time today, nobody at home was probably even awake yet, so I settled down and prepared for a lengthy search.  I found the cache in less than three minutes.  I walked to ground zero, then walked to the end of the bridge, stepped to the side, and spotted the container.  I came back and signed the log, after fighting to get the little darling free of it’s hiding spot.  It had a really strong magnet.

Walking back to my motorcycle, it finally dawned on me.  Life goes on.  The game continues with one less player.  Dad didn’t geocache.  I had invited him to join me once or twice, but he expressed that he wasn’t interested.  In fact, any time I mentioned it to other family members, he had this “Terry’s playing a silly game again” grin on his face.  On this day, just this once, I felt like Dad was Geocaching with me, and enjoying it.  Suddenly the giant hole in the middle of me was filled again, and I felt whole as I rode back home.

Oddly enough, incidently, two new Geocaches were published shortly after Dad died.  One’s final location is maybe a hundred feet or so from Dad’s final resting place.  Mom has joined me to look for those, and I think she wants to come along for some more.  Funny how things work out some time, isn’t it?

By JETSchmidt

A native Nebraskan (grew up in Elkhorn), I live in Bellevue with my
Lovely Wife and Son.  I've been a pilot and flight instructor
since 1988, but work in Information Systems to pay the bills.
I became obsessed with Geocaching in January of 2009, although I had
heard of the sport way back when I bought my first handheld
GPSr, a Garmin ETrex, when they first were introduced.
My favorite caches are the ones that take you somewhere off the beaten
track.  The one's out in the woods, or in hidden parks,
and the one's that someone took a lot of thought into creating.

--
---The sky is not a limit,
It is home.
-Terry Schmidt

Comments(1):

1. Something Almost Spiritual

   I just thought I'd add a little note, that I've hidden a cache right where I stopped that day. The cache is "Something Almost Spiritual" GC244ET. --Terry

   Monday, October 18, 2010 Terry