N 38° 50.241 W 079° 21.758

from Local Treasures

N 38° 50.241 W 079° 21.758

Earth, fire, water, wood, and metal. The five elements, ideally in balance. Here, though, at Seneca Rocks, in West Virginia, I am struck by the imbalance, by the preponderance of fire. The mountain is startlingly beautiful, but the scars of a fire that took place two years ago are still clear. Heading up the main trail, we see dozens and dozens of blackened trees, barren limbs, gutted stumps. They’re scattered among healthy trees, as if only the frailest had fallen to the flames. And in the first cache, we find a small container of marbles that the owner asked visitors not to take; it turns out this cache replaces one the owner made a few years ago (before the fire), and the marbles are all that survived. Now that I think about it, it’s rare for me to encounter so much fire. I see lots of earth and wood and water when geocaching (and plenty of metal at one remove, traveling to the caches by car). But living in the Northeast, I don’t encounter many forest fires firsthand.

Symbolically, fire has little to do with scorching combustion. The fire cycle as it’s described in the I Ching, for instance, is not about destruction or passion or any of the things flames often connote. It’s about distribution—about energy extending outward from its source, about consumption of resources and exchange of goods and ideas. The fire cycle not only provides an apt way of describing what fire does when it meets earth or water or wood, but also a fitting way of thinking about how distribution works in general. In that sense, I guess, fire is always an unspoken, invisible part of geocaching, for the game is about a healthful distribution of life’s pleasures. Players give of their time and energy as they wish, exchange things that offer simple pleasure, alert others to treasured places. A cycle of warmth that may serve as kindling for a dazzling cycle of fire.