36 student life Most college students were on the constant hunt to get cash. Whether by begging for it from their parents, getting a part-time job in the cafeteria or scrounging through their suitemates’ couch cushions, they had to find some way to pay for a midnight Wendy’s run or an upcoming date. But some students spent their weekends searching for a different kind of cache; these students went geocaching. Geocaching, or “caching” as the pro’s called it, was an adventurous hobby that took its participants scavenging through the woods, picking up rocks or even examining street lamps, all in the pursuit of a hidden cache. A cache was a small container, usually a film canister or lock box, that contained a logbook for hunters to sign once they had found it. While this might sound like an easy scavenger hunt, geocaching actually required the use of a GPS unit with specific coordinates found online that led to the cache site. Caches were hidden all over the world, each differing in level of difficulty to find. “[Caching] has two category ratings based on a five point scale,” senior Jason Hill said. “One rating [is] for difficulty or how well the cache is hidden and the other for how rough the terrain is to get through.” Some caches had to be dug for, some were magnetic, others hidden underwater and some were even on the Harding University campus. “I have done the 7 point Harding cache tour,” senior Jon Langford said. “It took a few months to find all of them because a few of the caches were disturbed by ‘muggles’, or non-caching folk. To this day, when introducing someone to geocaching, I always show him or her a few of the Harding caches. Everyone is amazed that they walk by them every day.” The Harding Tour was comprised of seven different caches spread throughout campus. Whether a student, faculty member or visitor to the campus, the caches provided a small history of the university and the surrounding area where the cache was hidden. For example, when discovering the cache hidden near the Harding History House, a treasure hunter would find information about the iconic Harding gates that were actually part of Galloway College, the women’s college that Harding replaced. Although Harding’s and the surrounding Searcy area’s caches might have been hard to get to, students said there were other sites more treacherous. “I spent a year in Iraq with the army between my junior and senior year at Harding,” Hill said. “Believe it or not, there are caches in Iraq in the middle of war. Because it was a war zone, you couldn’t give the correct coordinates because the enemy could use them to attack you, so the people [who set up the cache] would just give general descriptions of what was around it, and you used those clues to find the cache.” Other students also spoke about caches around the globe. “I wish I could have brought my GPS [unit] overseas because I heard there is one at the Pyramids of Giza,” senior Billie Pieters said. While most of the time the caches held only a sign-in log, some also had prizes. “People hide these caches all over the world and put prizes in them for people who find them,” Hill said. “Sometimes the prizes are really nice, like $100 for the first one to find it.” Although the thought of a cash-prize cache was appealing to some, the main reason for caching was the thrill of the hunt and exploring new or overlooked areas that went unnoticed to the untrained or GPS-less eye. “I am always excited about the caches that are hidden in the public that no one notices,” Langford said. “There have been many caches that I have walked by on a daily basis that were unnoticeable until geocaching. For example, a fake sprinkler head, a fake electrical outlet or even fake birds in a tree.” For anyone interested in caching, the requirements were only a working GPS unit, a passion for treasure hunting and access to the Internet. “Searcy is a great town to cache in,” Langford said. “There are over 200 caches in Searcy alone. Check out www.geocaching.com for further information and coordinates to start your own hunt.” Katie Ramirez outdoors experiencing the great
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