Gunung Batur

I looked straight. Straight into the darkness of the night, sensing the valley before me and guessing the shape of the volcano in front. With a deep breath, I took in the distance, the darkness and the challenge all together. And my mission. I took the first step, going down to the valley in order to go up.

“My bad luck ends today”, I thought, when I walked through the tropical forest of inland Bali, through the large crater, through the darkness of the night and my soul. My thoughts were on all the misses, the near finds, the frustrations I had over the last few months. “So many tries and so few successes” I thought, setting my eyes hard as iron on my objective ahead, the summit of the mountain I now had in front of me, while my hand instinctively went to the pocket of my jacket, touching it. “For years, I have seen them doing it in movies” I whispered to myself – “Is there any truth to it?” I asked to myself. And I lunged forward.

Then I reached it. The basis of the mountain, the volcano in front of me, its cone massive, standing against a night that was still black, matching my thoughts, matching my fears. I put a foot in front of the other, used my hands for support and compelled my body up, scrambling forward, towards the active crater. “You have failed me” I said to myself, once and again, and every time I said it, I walked faster upwards, faster and faster, almost running through the loose ground, through the hardened lava, in a rage that drew from my heart, from the darkness around me. I felt the fury taking over me, the strength and thrust of the mighty volcano, the power to destroy and regenerate – and I arrived up with all the negative feelings of my world upon me!

I stopped, looking at the darkness of the night around me. I looked down, at the darkness of the crater in front of me, fumes surrounding it, like a mouth opened to a hell well beyond my eyes and my comprehension. “For years, in the movies, the people would sacrifice virgins for good luck, for good crops, to these Gods and hide here” I said, and touched the object in my pocket. “You have given me so few successes, so many misses” and the darkness from the mouth of the volcano took me and my rage grew. I took my GPS out of my pocket, looked at it against the blackness of the depth. “No more DNFs, you lousy bastard! No more arrows pointing to the wrong bush, to the wrong crack in the mountain, to the wrong rock! No more 10m precision! No more muggles starring at me in cities while I look behind every traffic light! No more puzzled looks of other geocachers, their mouths saying ‘but the cache was right there!’ and their eyes questioning why I didn’t see it!”. “I sacrifice you, my GPS of doom!”, and my hands moved forward to the crater, ready to let it go to the darkness beneath my feet.

And then, something got my mind. A glimpse of blue light. A freshness of the air. A strong and bass voice that whispered powerfully through the wind. “You got me wrong”, it said, mighty as a whisper can be. “You got me wrong!” said that voice, all the power coming out of each word. I shivered! I looked down, beyond my feet, beyond the rim of the crater. I looked straight to that mouth of hell. To the source of that voice. To the volcano that was talking to me! I shivered, my eyes as big as satellites, my hands cold, my heart stopping. “You got me wrong! You got it all wrong! You got geocaching wrong!” said that voice I thought straight out of hell. “It is not the find that makes the geocacher. It is the experience of living the cache! The joy is not in finding it, it is searching it. With your heart. With your soul.”, said the volcano. “The GPS is no more than the extension of your heart. If you search a plastic container with your eyes or hands, you will not find it. You need to put your heart in the GPS, in the terrain around you. You need to put your heart in the GPS the same way the Owner put his heart onto his when hiding the cache. You have to live the experience he wanted you to live, not to find the plastic container he put there.” His words sank in my soul. My body warmed. My eyes grew softer. I felt tenderness invading me. I felt my heart beating again, not as ice against rock, but soft and strong. I looked forward to my hands. My GPS was smiling at me. He was looking right through my eyes, finding my soul, finding my Geocaching dreams and saying reassuringly “we will make it together”. I looked down at the volcano, the darkness of its mouth. But it was different. I saw shapes now, not only blackness, I saw shadows and tender light. And though it didn’t say anything else, I felt the volcano was pleased. Pleased with my change of heart. I straightened myself, looked not down, but around, and I felt the lightness of the air, the sky turning softly to blue, the coolness of morning. I looked around, and I didn’t see destruction anymore, I saw the forest, the lake, the people living around it, and I felt rejuvenation, I felt the volcano in a newer light. I felt that though it destroys, it brings life as well. The new life I was feeling now. Then, I put my GPS back in my pocket, I threw a last look, a “thank you!” whisper to the crater, and, with a smile and a dim of sunshine in my eyes, I started my journey down to the world, expecting not to find containers, but full geocaching life experiences.

Meu log em http://www.geocaching.com/seek/log.aspx?LUID=d0e34532-5404-49bc-ab14-ab06a4a27bd6