Now you have yet another reason to carry a firearm when you’re in the great outdoors.
Geocaching is a popular pastime here in the Northwest – but one that is now being targetted by a small group of environmentalists. Geocaching is fast becoming “geo-smashing,” with vandals destroying caches in the name of protecting forests.
Geocachers use GPS systems to search for hidden treasures left behind by fellow game players. Hiking trails are among the most popular spots.
“It’s so peaceful. It’s just beautiful out here,” says David Vaughn as he hunts for treasure on Cougar Mountain near Issaquah.
“This is one of those places that I may not have even known existed,” says David’s wife Jacquie. “It probably never would have been on my beaten path.”
But it’s what happens off that beaten path that has some taking matters into their own hands.
People calling themselves “Forest Defenders” have been searching out the caches themselves and destroying them – tossing them in the trash and posting pictures on the internet. They say cachers are harming habitats and destroying fragile vegetation by traipsing off the trails. They even claim caches have been planted on a sacred Indian burial site on Whidbey Island.
With typical leftist fanaticism, the eco-mentalists have decreed Geocachers too stupid to know what is good for the wilderness, and declared themselves to be the only ones who can save it.
These are the same twerps who join ALF and ELF and with the explosion of geocaching activity in the local area lately, this will very likely turn violent within the next year or so.
Those who would pack heat in the woods usually have better things to do than play at geocaching, so I predict that there won’t be any armed conflict.
There might be some old-fashioned fisticuffs, though. Maybe if an eco-twerp gets beaten senseless by a geocacher, and pictures are taken and then posted on the Internet, the eco-twerps might have pause to reflect.
But apparently it’s OK for the eco-defenders to walk off-trail to find, destroy, and photograph said caches?
Hypocrisy: it’s what’s for dinner.
Why yes, Mallbot, yes it is.
I’d worry about ELF/ALF bobby-trapping caches.
“Uh, yeah, I was looking for a geocache? And I found a head where it’s supposed to be…”