Discovering DC's Spark

Juggling grad school and all of the associated tasks required making the dreams of a lifetime come true; I don’t have much time for hobbies. Truthfully, I have only one hobby: geocaching. In short, geocaching is a global scavenger hunt where hunters seek out “treasure” with GPS coordinates. At the coordinates geocachers may find everything from a magnetic black tube the size of the tip of their little finger with a log book inside to sign to a large ammunition can with treasures to trade and a log book. The most rewarding part of the hobby is exploring both familiar and unfamiliar places. In one day of geocaching on foot I found ten geocaches and discovered some of the magic of Washington, DC.

In the fall of 2009 I was a Christine Mirzayan Science and Technology Policy Graduate Fellow at the National Academy of Sciences. This put me six hours from “home,” where Chris and my cats were, in a city I had only visited once previously. The fellowship was an opportunity of a lifetime that I would strongly recommend, but there was a little matter of what to do on the weekends. This was one of the earlier weekends I was in DC and the answer was clear: geocache.

I started the hunt in a place I was familiar with, the Academies. Outside the entrance to the Academies facility I was working out of was a cache, Slow Rondo. From Slow Rondo, I ventured a few blocks to Chinatown’s most obvious landmark to find a virtual cache, Do You Feel Stupid Yet? A virtual cache is one with no physical logbook to sign, but where you must answer questions and/or take a photograph to prove you were there. But from here, it was toward terra incognito, although geographically I was headed in the direction of the White House.

My next cache was a landmark, it was our 100th find. I say “our” because since day one, Chris and I have shared our geocaching account. The cache, The Actor Really Did Break a Leg, took me to the exact place where President Abraham Lincoln died, a home right across from Ford’s Theater. It was a pure accident this is what happened, but I couldn’t imagine a more interesting cache as the landmark.

The next two caches were typical of DC, they were virtual caches, at some of the best monuments and statues in the District, Expanse of Freedom and General of the Armies. But the one after was an immediately favorite, it was stone indicating Mile Zero of the National Highway System. From this point, most people are probably ogling over the White House, which is squarely behind this stone, but for me I felt as if I was in the presence of greatness. After ogling like a fan girl, I looked at the GPS and found the next one was only a few hundred feet away, A Wood Chuck's Paradise, at the National Christmas Tree.

From behind the White House, I began to meander toward Adams Morgan, where I was planning on meeting me fellowship colleagues for dinner. I found myself in a park dedicated to a man who helped open up the west, but was now clustered with homeless people. Yet a few blocks later, I found a webcam cache at the most expensive university in the country to attend, at least it was in 2009, George Washington University. Webcam caches, similar to virtuals, have no physical logbook to sign, but you must get in the field of vision for the cam and have someone remotely capture an image of you in the shot.

On the campus of George Washington University. September 2009.

But with an eye on the watch, my final find of the day was on a deserted urban street, home to the offices of law firms and lobbyists. 18th and N St NW would be occupied the next morning, but for now those who work there were likely at their homes in Virginia and Maryland. I quickly recovered a bison tube tucked up under a lamppost and signed my name on the log. Of the ten caches I found, this and Slow Rondo were the only ones that had a physical logbook to sign.

From here, I hurried through DuPont Circle up to Lauriol Plaza, one of the best Mexican restaurants in DC to join the other fellows, some of whom I still count among my very best friends. DC is hundreds of worlds packed into a small area, and this was only a compressed taste of discoveries to come, courtesy, in part, to geocaching.