Poe little me

These days I don't do much caving. I'm not really too old to do it, but it is harder than it used to be. I'm glad I have a new interest to augment it - not replace it just yet - and it's good that it takes me to such interesting places.

Geocaching doesn't cost much after the initial investment, buying a GPS unit. And if you have an iPhone, you can even get an app that will do what your GPS would have done, only better. Well, better in the sense that you don't have to have a computer with you to find nearby caches.

As a direct result of geocaching, I have seen an oak tree on the gulf coast that is over a thousand years old. I never knew such a thing existed in Texas - and even if I had, I likely wouldn't have traveled all that way just to see it.



Most recently, I had turned down a chance to travel to Baltimore MD with GA, until I began preparing her a list of caches near where she would be staying on her business trip. When I realized that there was a cache just outside the cemetery where Edgar Allen Poe was buried, I changed my mind.


I timed it in such a way that this cache would be my 200th, a milestone cache, so it appears that way on my profile. GA and I visited the site, scored the cache, and then I recited (well, I read) Eldorado while seated next to his grave.

Gaily bedight,
A gallant knight,
In sunshine and in shadow,
Had journeyed long,
Singing a song,
In search of Eldorado.

But he grew old-
This knight so bold-
And o'er his heart a shadow
Fell as he found
No spot of ground
That looked like Eldorado.

And, as his strength
Failed him at length,
He met a pilgrim shadow-
"Shadow," said he,
"Where can it be-
This land of Eldorado?"

"Over the Mountains
Of the Moon,
Down the Valley of the Shadow,
Ride, boldly ride,"
The shade replied-
"If you seek for Eldorado!"

Or something like that.

There is a church built over many of the graves in this cemetery, because somebody passed a silly law requiring that cemeteries must have some sort of church on the premises. No, I didn't crawl under the church to see the tombstones better.



Life is good.