N is for Noticing

We spent part of our morning geocaching. For those who are unfamiliar, Wikipedia defines Geocaching as follows:

Geocaching is an outdoor recreational activity, in which participants use a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver or mobile device and other navigational techniques to hide and seek containers, called "geocaches" or "caches", anywhere in the world.

A typical cache is a small waterproof container containing a logbook (with a pen or pencil). The geocacher enters the date they found it and signs it with their established code name. After signing the log, the cache must be placed back exactly where the person found it. Larger containers such as plastic storage containers (Tupperware or similar) or ammunition boxes can also contain items for trading, such as toys or trinkets.

So basically it's a world-wide treasure hunt, and you might be surprised to discover that there are probably several geocaches within easy traveling distance of your present location. Just go to the website and look. Finding the troves can be challenging; they are usually hidden very cleverly and the rules of the game call for you to be stealthy in your hunt.

My older nephews and I have spent many a fun afternoon chasing down a cache or two or five, and they were always very good at ferreting them out, although we have been stumped on several occasions. Today it was my niece Annabelle who was our lead searcher, and she turned out to be the best spotter yet-- she located both of our quarries in under a minute. That's impressive, but when I told her mom, my sister said, "I'm not surprised. She notices everything!"

Life Lesson: "Between those who notice such things and those who don't, I prefer those who do.” ~Wallace Stegner, Angle of Repose

X is for X Marks the Spot

Do you think it would be fun to follow clues leading to a hidden treasure? If your answer is yes, then Geocaching is for you! Geocaching is an international game where people hide "caches" all over the world, then they post the GPS coordinates of these hidden stashes on a website called geocaching.com along with clues to help other geocachers find them.

Once you find a cache, you sign the log book and post your discovery. Some caches have trading items-- you take a fun trinket from the collection inside and replace it with one of your own. Some of them have "travel bugs." These are things that travel from cache to cache-- your job is to help them on their way by taking them from one site and placing them in another. For example, once I found a Red Sox keychain that was trying to travel from Florida back to Boston in time for the world series. Fortunately, I was going that way on vacation, and so I dropped it off about 10 miles west of Fenway Park.

You would be amazed how many caches there are-- it's over 1.3 million worldwide. You can find them almost anywhere you go-- in my small town alone, there are over 500, and one of them is even on the grounds of our school. When I first started geocaching, you needed a special device to play, but these days, many smart phones have GPS capability, and some of them even have an app to help you play, so it's easier than ever to get started with this fun hobby, so what are you waiting for?

Life Lesson: There's treasure everywhere!

Treasure

My older nephews and I have been geocaching together for years, and now that my youngest nephew, Richard, is four, he wants in on the treasure hunting. It seemed like a perfect holiday afternoon activity to take a walk to the park and look for a cache that is hidden there. Over the years, we've found almost a hundred caches, and it's safe to say that we find what we're looking for more often than not, so it was a confident party of seven who set out between opening our stockings and the big holiday dinner. The cache we were after was only rated one out of five stars for challenge, and I was expecting a quick and successful initiation for Richard into this fun pastime.

Long story short, we couldn't find the treasure, and he was a little disappointed, as we all were. We promised to look again tomorrow when the light was better, but as we were walking home in the gathering darkness, Treat and Richard were ahead together on the path. "Hey guys," I heard Treat say. "I found the treasure!"

Richard stopped dead in tracks, his eyes open wide. "He's just teasing you," I told him.

"No really," Treat continued, and before I could scold him, he said, "The treasure was inside me all the time-- it was friendship!" He was kidding, but his voice was so sweet and sincere that I had to play along.

"Friendship and the love of family, right?" I asked him.

"Right," he confirmed, and we all walked on together toward the lights of home.

SOLSC Day 28

Last July my writing group agreed to do our own novel writing month. For those who aren't familiar, there's actually an official NaNoWriMo (wait for it), but it takes place in November, and as teachers, it seemed silly to try to write a novel in a month in the middle of the school year when we had the whole summer to try it.

In retrospect, I'm not sure if that was a good call or not-- the old adage that if you want something done, give it to a busy person, might have had some bearing here. Each of the four of us started a novel, but early on we abandoned the basic concept of the challenge, that "Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It's all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly." I like to think that we thought too highly of our ideas to relegate them to such fast and furious crap production, but who knows?

By the end of the month we had roughly 20% of the required word count, but we all had the beginning of, well, a novel. I've worked on mine on and off since then, and I feel like I'm making some progress. There have been unexpected benefits, too. In a beginning-of-the-year-introduce-yourself exercise with my students, I mentioned that I was working on a novel, and I was amazed at the level of interest and engagement that they showed. It gave me some serious writing cred with the sixth graders. As the year has gone on, I've used bits and pieces of my work-in-progress to discuss leads, hooks, and character development, and it's been really fun; the kids have offered some constructive advice, too.

My novel is about two 12-year-old boys who are geocaching and find a clue to a real treasure. The kids in the story are based on two boys whom I adore-- my nephew and my godson. When I'm writing, I like imagining what one or the other of them might do in the situations that I am making up. I also think that they think it is pretty cool to be characters in a novel. They both happen to be here in the room with me at this very moment; that only happens a few times a year, and we're going to do a little novel reading in a few minutes. I hope they like it.