Open Your Heart with Geocaching
Open Your Heart with Geocaching: Mastering Life Through Love of Exploration is opening hearts and minds, and garnering accolades from readers. Here's what people are saying – why not join them now?
“In a sea of ‘How To’ books, finally there is a ‘Why To’ book. Jeannette truly captures the joy and spirit of geocaching; this book doesn't just teach a new hobby, it reveals new tools for finding greater fulfillment and passion in our lives. –Mary Votava, actor and geocacher
My experience with serious geocachers so far has made the activity more of a competition (both with others and with oneself) than anything that could enhance ones mental and spiritual wellbeing. However, I tried to set aside my prejudices and read the book for what it is, and I found myself surprised to realize that by the end, it had changed my outlook on geocaching. Cézanne has poured herself and her world into this book. The language is conversational and flows easily from point to point. She approaches geocaching less from the geeky/techie perspective, and more from the outdoor enthusiast perspective. For her, caching is less about the destination as it is about the journey. I think this is a perspective that is often lost amid the crowing and strutting by those who play for the numbers. This is a book I would recommend to new or potential geocachers who haven't yet been corrupted, or to those who are burnt out by the competition and arguments. It's just the sort of kick in the pants one needs to gain the perspective that will increase one's enjoyment of geocaching and simply exploring some place new.–Anna Creech, BlogCritics.com
From the Introduction:
“Geocaching has been described, tongue firmly planted in cheek, as a scavenger hunt that uses multi-million-dollar satellites to locate worthless toys. That’s certainly one way of looking at it. There’s another way of seeing the hobby, though, and it is that geocaching brings people closer to nature, closer to each other, and closer to things that give them joy. It’s a hobby that can be practiced in a myriad of different ways, with varying activities and different goals, and can support nearly any way of relating to others and the world.”
The book's foreword is written by Jeremy Irish, founder and CEO of Groundspeak and geocaching.com.
What is it about? Geocaching is a seven-year-old hobby that's essentially a treasure hunt using GPS coordinates to locate "caches" placed by other geocachers. The journey can take one to places deep in the woods, be an urban destination (the two caches I've placed are in cities), or involve solving a puzzle or going to different stages before discovering the final. The cache itself is generally held to be of less interest than the process of finding it.
There are also special caches: geo-events (I host one at a local pub three times a year), CITO (cache in, trash out) events, educational ones used by schools and by team-building consultants, and others. It' s also a great travel game. While the guidebooks take you to places all the tourists go, finding a cache takes you somewhere the local people feel is worthwhile going. I just did a cache in Bucarest in a park that's far from the tourbooks and ended up spending a lovely afternoon in a place I'd *never* have found on my own.
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