Journey

The goal of geocaching is to find the container (the cache) at the coordinates the app leads you to. Last week, I went geocaching in Baltimore... and never found the cache itself. "Wait!" I hear you say. "You went walking across Baltimore in the icky summer humidity and you didn't even find what you were looking for?!" Yup. I did. So why am remembering this with a smile? 

After a delicious lunch at Nando's PERi PERi (I highly recommend the kebabs), we started the half-mile trek to the location of the cache. We could see the bay just past the next road over. Tall masts seemed to scrape the sky as the sun steadily scorched our skin. 

The bay was out of sight as soon as we entered the alley of tall apartments. All the doors were brightly colored and friendly against the dull brick buildings. The quintessential cellar access doors on the ground prompted my mom start singing the children's song: "Slide down my rain barrel / Into my cellar door / And we'll be jolly friends / Forever more, more, more." 

I looked up, shading my eyes from the suns light and the name of the street caught my eye. Then, we met the hound of Shakespeare Street. It threw itself at its front window, clearly upset by the strength of the glass between him and us. The mailman we passed by next had no doubt seen the frightening hound plenty of times and seemed unfazed by its animated aggression. A narrow plot of land kept the headstone of a figure past. Old moss from decades past clung to the large stone. Exiting the alley neighborhood, I could see the bay again and the pop up shops on the boardwalk. 

We were nearly there. We passed a shop named Duck Duck Goose and after another block or so, we arrived at the location the geocache had led us to: a secret garden. Tucked between two large buildings, we never would've found it unless we had been led there. An apple tree grew against the brick and thrived among purple flowers. The sun beamed a spotlight on the center of the garden and the rest was shaded by the buildings surrounding it.

So, why was I remembering this with a smile? Honestly, I don't know if finding the cache would've added much to the journey. The colors of natural flowers and painted doors, the sound of an animate hound and the silence of one long dead, the bright sun over the bay and the shade in a secret garden: this perfect balance of things newly found and discovered couldn't have fit in any geocaching container. 

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