The site was a bench, surrounded by scruffy shrubs and ice plant, on a low bluff next to a beach. The hint for the listing suggested the cache was hanging—which we took to mean in the shrubbery, based on other logs that said . . .
Oh, the details aren't important, except one: a couple of months ago, a cacher whom I admire and consider very accomplished, posted a DNF. He had searched fifteen minutes, including, I surmise from his log, the bench. Which is why we focused so thoroughly on all that nasty shrubbery: if Alastair had searched the bench, there was no way it could be there!
In the meantime, the CO (cache owner) checked, and he said the cache was right where it should be. So we knew it was somewhere! I mean, what were the chances it had been "muggled" (cache-speak for destroyed by non-geocachers)?
The point is: I was stubborn and refused to give up.
And at last, after we'd spent a good fifteen or twenty minutes looking in all the scruffy shrubs around, I decided to take another look at the bench. And sure enough, there it was, hanging on the side of a leg! Camouflaged by shadow and foliage, but still: right where any self-respecting CO would put it. Not in the stinking shrubbery!
So yay for perseverance. And boo for a mindset that had us looking everywhere but in the right place.
Isn't that so often the case? We get our brains wrapped around a particular idea and are unable to see what is, for all intents and purposes, right in front of us.
Today's lesson in that was of minor consequence, really. But it was good to be reminded how important it is to keep an open mind, think outside the box, and not get sidetracked by what we tell ourselves, which could very well be wrong.
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