The Search for Etheric Generator, Part I
When I was a kid, I adored Easter egg hunts, and the occasional party that included a treasure hunt sent me into orbit. And when my cousin Jim turned me on to the sport of geocaching a few years ago, it instantly captivated me. For those who aren’t familiar with geocaching, the principle is simple: Cachers put together caches composed of weather-tight containers that house a few inexpensive items, like sewing kits or buttons or small toys, plus a small notebook and pencil to record anything finders might want to say about their journey and search; then they hide them on public land. Players log on to the geocaching site, enter the area in which they want to explore, and obtain a list of sites nearby that have caches hidden on them. They’re given the GPS coordinates and a few cryptic clues as to the whereabouts of the cache. When they find the cache, they can leave items or trade items, but you can’t take something if you don’t add something.
When I published my novel, The Last Good Fairy, I decided to make it a multi-media project and create four small works of art associated with it that would be hidden in four different parts of the country. (If you’re interested, check out other sections of the website to get more information.) Pictures of the artwork compose the endleaves of the book, and a bookmark included with the book gives clues to the location of the art. Anyone who found the art was welcome to keep it; I included a postcard in each cache so that the finder could let me know—and I could let readers know—the artwork was no longer available. One work was hidden in New England, one in Colorado, one in Southern California, and one here in Northern California.
Friends and family hid the artwork in other parts of the country while Richard and I hid the piece in our neck of the woods. Richard decided that the perfect spot would be on Grizzly Peak, an old fire lookout that we had hiked to one day with friends many years ago. We set off early one morning and drove up I-5, exited south of Mt. Shasta, and headed east. When we came to the Forest Service road that our map showed would take us to the lookout, we turned off the secondary highway we had been following, and headed into the wild.
When we had hiked to Grizzly Peak, we had approached it from Big Bend, several miles to the south and east. But this time we were coming at it from the north. We didn’t realize what a long and arduous drive it was going to be. In fact, we ended up having to ditch our truck at one point because we didn’t have 4WD and our truck wasn’t able to keep climbing. We got out and walked to the fire lookout, where there was not a single soul until the minute we got there and started looking for a place to hide the art. Then a motorcyclist showed up out of nowhere and would not leave, absolutely would not leave, until we did. Maybe he was thinking the same thing! Damn, these assholes will not leave!!
So we hiked down from the lookout and found a lovely glade dotted with some gorgeous pine trees whose cones were dripping with honey-like sap, where a cairn was conveniently erected nearby, and where an incredible view of Mt. Shasta filled the horizon. We placed the cookie tin that contained “Etheric Generator” (above) under a pile of sticks that we hoped would cushion it from the winter snows, bade it goodbye, and wondered if a bear coming across a cookie tin would rip into it, even in the absence of any food odors.
We hiked back to our truck and drove out, having eaten up pretty much an entire day. I wondered if anyone was going to want to go to so much trouble to find a piece of art whose whereabouts they weren’t even sure of. But when we got back on pavement and I looked back at Grizzly Peak, it sure seemed that Etheric Generator was shooting a concentrated beam of positive and playful vibes into the Cosmos, which felt like a good thing regardless of what happened in the future.
Well, I published The Last Good Fairy in the winter. The first artwork to be found, in the spring, was “Upper Echelons,” hidden near Vail, Colorado by a friend of many years who’s a trauma surgeon, elk hunter, mountain climber, and survival camper. However, because he decided that his perfect spot was on the side of a mountain that had no big rocks, he and a fellow surgeon took a flag stone from our friend’s patio and packed it to their spot in order to hide the cache. I was deeply moved and honored by their dedication! But as it turns out, the flag stone was way too tempting for those who know these mountains well, and a passing hiker investigated, found the cache, decided to keep the art, and sent me the postcard. On the card, they told me they didn’t know anything about the book or project and to tell them more via their e-mail address. I sent them some additional info, but they never wrote me back. Okay, there’s no guarantee that someone who’s not a lot of fun won’t find your hidden artwork if you put it out there for just anyone. Life is like that.
Then someone who bought the book in Massachusetts found the artwork, “Dimensional Window,” that was hidden in New England. But it had been vandalized. The artwork contained three dollars worth of charms and whoever stumbled upon first it removed them. Geez! The finders decided not to keep the art and my wonderful sister- and brother-in-law repaired it; so it’s still out there, as far as I know. Well, again, it was pretty disappointing that someone not so nice was the first to find the art. But again, that’s life, isn’t it? I knew I was taking a gamble.
Time passed. Winter came. There was no way to search for Etheric Generator for months. Then summer came and went, too. The wildfires both hogged the entire summer and burned it up at the same time. Fall approached and with it, the promise of snow at higher elevations. I figured Etheric Generator was out of reach for another year.
Then I ran into a good friend who had purchased a copy of The Last Good Fairy. She told me she was determined to find the art. “I love treasure hunts!” she told me. And she felt that this piece was intended for her. She had some free time coming up and felt confident that she knew where the clues were pointing.
Shortly thereafter, Richard and I drove down to the Bay Area to visit family. We were staying with one of my cousins and hanging out at his house before he got home from work … napping, reading, poking around his gardens and admiring the view. All of a sudden, around four o’clock, this thought popped into my head: “Sharon has found ‘Etheric Generator!’”
Well, it must have been a lot earlier in the day if she did find it, I thought. A find at four o’clock didn’t really leave enough time to get off the mountain roads with daylight to spare. I was feeling guilty, actually, about having set the bar so high on this particular cache, encouraging people to take such risks without a guarantee of reward. Another friend had looked for the art a year before, as a matter of fact, but took my clues to mean a different area where he spent a day exploring with his dog but came away empty-handed. He assured me, though, that the treasure hunt had given him a good excuse to go on an adventure in some beautiful country, which, in fact, was one of the main points of the whole exercise. So I told myself not to worry. Then we proceeded to party with ultra delightful friends and family the entire weekend and eat incredible, exotic food. My friend’s quest to find Etheric Generator—and Etheric Generator’s quest to be found—slipped from my mind.
I came home to a message on my voice mail that was so excited and rushed I could barely understand the words. I had to play it through twice. And then I realized it was Sharon, calling to tell me that she had, in fact, found Etheric Generator!
Her tale is a great one and one that I’ll save for the next post. But here are some tantalizing details: It was completely squashed, although the artwork inside remained intact, and it wasn’t where it had started out … .
Sunday, November 2, 2008