Issue date: 7/24/08 Section: News

Frequent geocacher Joe Wyrick(right), 54, and Helmsman staffer Joseph Russell bridging the Wolf River.

One careful step after another, take your time and don't look down - the smallest mistake could mean the difference between being safe or plunging 60 feet into the Wolf River below.

There's treasure to be found just on the other side of the abandoned railroad bridge, and it's too late to turn back now. Welcome to the world of geocaching.

Geocaching is a treasure-hunting game used with Global Positioning Systems where people hide treasure, or caches, anywhere they want. Then they put the coordinates online for other people to hunt down and find. The contents of a cache can include anything from toys and baseball caps to metal coins, made especially for geocaching, with no monetary value, but all caches include a logbook where the finders sign their names to indicate they have been there.

The outdoor sport kicked off in May of 2000, when civilians could use a GPS of their own for the first time. The first cache was created just two days later in Oregon, and the adventure hasn't stopped since.

While most college students might be sleeping in after a night of partying or enjoying a day off from work, my Saturday involved climbing trees, walking through unseen cobwebs in the woods and swatting away insects from every angle in the middle of the heat and humidity of a typical Memphis summer day.

The day began at Shelby Farms where I met my geocaching guides for the day: Joe Greshm, 60, a retired project manager from IBM; Kevin Dufrene, 25, a student at Southwest Tennessee Community College; and Joe Wyrick, 54, president of a private company. All of them are members of the Geocachers of West Tennessee.

I had never done anything like this before so I had no idea what kind of clothing to wear. I felt confident that my ensemble of khaki shorts, T-shirt, tennis shoes and a baseball cap would keep me comfortable. I was wrong.

As I met my guides, I saw they were all wearing long pants and looked a little more prepared than I was. My legs would later pay for my poor choice in clothing when we had to walk through thorn bushes in the woods.

I was given a spare GPS of my own to use so that I could see the location of every cache within miles. There are more than 800 caches in Shelby County, some that people see every day and never even realize what they are looking at. Caches can range in size from a bait and tackle box to a canister the size of your thumb.

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