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Like geocaching itself, this book can be approached on many levels. It is a travelogue, a diary, a book of pictures, a cultural investigation, an instruction book, and a meditation on the persistence of community, love of place, generosity, and personal encounter in the digital age. It is an ideal vehicle for one whose gifts are visual and literary in equal measure. Ms. Kelly’s experiences as a passionate geocacher are the foundation of her inquiry, which range widely across many physical, cultural, technological, and virtual landscapes. One trusts her observations because they are direct; their beauty seems to arise uncoerced from the plain facts before her and her camera. One trusts her speculations because they are so deeply rooted in her observations. For anyone who has worried, as who has not, about the survival of recognizably human connections in the wide wired and wireless world of the 21st Century, Margot Kelly gives us reasons for hope, if indeed geocaching is the paradigmatic activity she believes it is. But neither has she abandoned her critical intelligence to the high technical marvel of the GPS finder. Her enchantment with this phenomenon, which has elements of sport, game, hobby, social gathering, family activity, and geographical exploration, has not blinded her to some of the far-from-benign uses to which the technology essential to the pursuit can be turned, nor has it blunted her apprehension at the many disturbing features of the contemporary landscape turned up in her quest for the Next Cache. Between caution and enthusiasm, however, the struggle is not long; Local Treasures is far more likely to send you first to the geocaching website, then to the local outdoor store for your GPS device, and then on to your first geocaching adventure, than it is to leave you wondering who might be watching you and from where. Frank Gohlke Southborough, Massachusetts Copyright by Frank Gohlke 2005 |