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The Oregon Surveyor
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Vol. 39, No. 5
8
Future Surveyors
By David Wellman, PLS, PE
Pokemon & GeoCaching
T
he last two articles in the recent Oregon Surveyor
inspired me to submit this article. I’ve submitted
before but it has been a while and Greg’s first articu-
lation and request for material reminded me that it
had indeed been a while. The second, being not my
story of how I became a surveyor (however similar to
Greg’s), is my experience of how perhaps the notion
of becoming a surveyor could be instilled in the
younger generation.
So here goes...
There we were this July on a lovely summer vacation
in the great State of Maine with some good friends
and their family. Their children were 10 and 13. A boy
and girl. Being from Maine I was proud to show off
some of my old haunts, secret places off the tourist
trail and of course allow time for the consumption
of the ubiquitous Maine lobster in all the delectable
forms. As we toured the State it became increasingly
annoying to the parental elders of the entourage that
the kids were riveted to their iPhones playing games.
It was particularly annoying to me that they were not
significantly impressed with the stellar New England
coastal scenery and charm. The quaint fishing village,
the lobster boats in harbors, blueberry
barrens, or even the potential of
spotting a moose wallowing in a
roadside bog escaped their conscious-
ness. Eyes were riveted to the Nintendo
game of Pokémon with an uncanny
attention span known only to computer
literate youngsters. Squeals of joy
and delight came from the far back
seat as they “threw” balls at Pidgeys,
Diglets, and some sort of animated
dragon thingamajig. As we would pass
a historic church, town library or Civil
War statue they would cry out to stop
the car so they could log in and hurl
balls at these cloud based touch screen
attackers—all the while never looking
out the window at the reason for stopping. My
irritation level was growing.
An unplanned medical emergency prompted a
precautionary trip to the emergency room for the
Mom. Her husband of course attended her trip to
the hospital as well as my wife who knew where
the hospital was. That left me with two Nintendo
crazed children for the day. What to do. I’m not an
accomplished child sitter, but I had an idea. Let’s go
on a treasure hunt, I suggested. After the barrage of
teenager questions of what, when, where, why, and
how I took a deep breath and suggested GeoCaching.
A true treasure hunt of animate objects. How novel?
The idea was mulled around in the childlike brains
and was accepted as being a legitimate afternoon
activity. Yikes—now I’m in a spot. Never having
GeoCached I was expected to perform at a profes-
sional surveyor level, if not parental level, and quickly.
As I gathered my wits I suggested their must be an
App for this GeoCaching stuff. They logged out of
the Nintendo dribble and promptly found a free App
and asked me how to make it work. Well let me tell
you it is indeed very scary to try and impress preteen
children with advanced iPhone brains on how to
navigate the cloud. But triumphant we were, and
in minutes out the door to a nearby cache site the
location of which I knew something about.
And that’s how it went for the entire afternoon.
Lessons in coordinate systems, which way is north,
how to decipher latitude and longitude,
reading descriptions, really reading
descriptions, really thinking when
reading descriptions. And then there
was the looking, really looking, and
really reading the descriptions while
really looking. Lessons in why we
don’t just run directly across private
property. Lessons were given in map
reading. Lessons in sometimes the
walk is long and hot and buggy. How
to have fun when the walk is long and
hot and buggy. How to use GPS and
what does it all mean. Realizing GPS
may not be quite as accurate as you
would think it should be. More serious
looking. The treasure hunt was “game on”. Talk about
the squeals of delight when they found a cache. Talk
about the pride in having navigated the web, the
description, the hike, the terrain, the search and the
recovery. Oh yes, and the prize. Then there is the
recovery note taking, the logging in and signing off on