Brat Park and Cannot turn back: my frustration with these two geocaches has left me confused. Last Fall, equipped with a map, some cache-making supplies and a sense that there was a gap in caches between the Doan Brook corridor and the Euclid Creek area, my children (aka the "cache crew") and I found this neat little park in Bratenahl. Clean, well equipped and deserted, the park has a tree with a nice crack in it that seemed ideal for hiding a small cache container, what they call a micro. In this case, it was a 33mm film canister with a log for visitors to sign, a pencil stub and a wheat back penny.
We left it there for a few days, check back on it, decided that it was a good spot and published it, with longitude and latitude to geocaching.com as "Brat Park". It was found almost immediately and we began looking for another park to place a cache.
The map shows a little green spot south of the walls and Interstate 90, on the Cleveland side of the line. We loaded up the cache crew and supplies again and paid it a visit. It's a neat little park on the edge of a residential neighborhood. There was no one there, the park was clean and we quickly found a spot to place the cache. I came back a few days later to exchange the container since I had doubts as to its suitability given the weather it would be exposed to (rain). Same experience: no one there. We published it, with longitude and latitude to geocaching.com as "Cannot turn back", after a phrase in MLK's famous speech. The park is named Martin Luther King Jr. Park.
My children at the time were 10, 7, 3 and newly born (now 11, 8, 4 and almost one). I am not a who-needs-a-parachute? risk-taker. However, I don't tell my children to be careful. I tell them to be aware. Aware of their surroundings, aware of what they are doing, aware of what might happen. Being aware of the dog that's approaching and how it is acting is more useful than being "careful", whatever that means.
So when "Cannot turn back" didn't get as much traffic as its northern neighbor, I went to check on it. This time there's a group of children who, without comment, mingle with mine on the playground. The cache is fine. I am aware of feeling a little odd being the only white people around. I am aware of the boarded up buildings and the graffiti. But I am not aware of feeling threatened or being uncomfortable. We visit again some months later in the afternoon with much the same experience. In all, after five or more "cache checks", we've never felt threatened or worried. Out of place a couple of times. The subject of interest and curiosity a few times. Meanwhile, the cache has been unmolested by muggles and somewhat ignored by the caching community (compared to the traffic at other caches, for example). Some of those who visit report feeling unsafe. In one instance, I was counseled to shut the cache down by "archiving" it. (I have.)
Brat Park is also archived, but for different reasons. Bratenahl is an affluent strip of lakeshore with monstrous homes, large and densely-growing trees and high incomes. To get to the cache's spot one must drive by a police station. I have never seen a child there and only occasionally see folks at the nearby dog park. This cache had a reasonable flow of traffic. At some point it was muggled and the cache container repeatedly needed replacing. As I don't have time to constantly replace caches, I archived it.
One poster to the Cannot turn back cache commented that while on the map there is less than ½ mile between the two caches, there may as well be a thousand miles separating them (my paraphrasing).
One is tucked away in a quiet spot with large trees all around, designated parking, tennis courts, a nice (expensive, tax-payer funded) gazebo, a dog park, heavy security, woodchips under the nice playground equipment and lots of green grass. The other is bordered by a few boarded up homes, has some graffiti, a strange spongy stuff under the chipped and outdated playground equipment and a fair amount of concrete.
They are nearby and yet a world apart. And I remain confused.
