Finding Ulysses

This weekend, the Syracuse Post-Standard filmed the following video of a geocacher walking above the gorge in Taughannock State Park, finding a geocache and leaving behind a small gift for the next person to search for the cache. Geocaching is a past-time in which people leave waterproof containers hidden in places that most people can get to – on public lands or along a street – and then share the coordinates so that other people, using GPS devices, can find the cache.

It’s derived from an older practice which involves searching for caches without using GPS devices, and often without even uploading directions to a central web site. In the old way of caching, a commonly known cache would be a place to leave written instructions about how to find other caches, where other people might have left directions for finding yet other caches, and so on, creating a twisted web of caches that people would search and re-search to find clues to expand their list of finds. People would sign their names, or leave a token, to prove they had been to certain caches.

Geocaching may be a little bit more open, but the end result is still the same: People get out walking, exploring the landscape in ways they otherwise wouldn’t. Geocaching.com is a good place to get started with this activity – and according to its registry, there are 18 geocache sites within three miles of Trumansburg. People leave notes of their activity there, and it seems that the geocacher in the video above was searching through Trumansburg not long ago – on June 29.