Geogirl. Kelly Rysten

maybe I could touch it if the light from the flashlight had been spotted reflecting off of it.

      “I see your arm,” Twiggy said from below.

      “Yeah, it even has a forearm,” I joked.

      His swooshing zeroed in on the spot where he saw my arm.

      “Okay, stand up and do whatever that other guy was doing,” he said.

      “He was just looking down through the hole. Walk around and look up like you are talking to me,” I said.

      “I am talking to you.”

      “Well, move the light around a bit and let me adjust my position.”

      Unfortunately, my Geometry 101 class taught me that the likelihood of finding the exact angle to spot the reflection was slim. Repeating the feat was almost impossible.

      I heard tires crunching on small stones and looked up to see a police cruiser pulling up to the bridge. It stopped and an officer stepped out.

      “Good morning!” he said.

      “Good morning,” I answered as I picked my way off the bridge.

      “Hank Conrad was at the market and said there was folks on the old Miller Bridge. He was worried about you falling through or something. I just thought I ought to warn you that the bridge is old and unstable.”

      “Okay, well… thank you. I think we’re fine. We’ll be careful.”

      “What are you doing?”

      Gulp, what was I supposed to do? I couldn’t lie to an officer of the law.

      “We’re geocaching,” I said.

      “Geocaching? What’s that?”

      “There is a container hidden here and we have the coordinates to find it, except that our GPS ran out of power. We know it’s somewhere close so we’re looking for it.”

      “What makes you think there’s a container on the old Miller Bridge?” he asked.

      “Somebody hid it here and posted the coordinates online.”

      “And you believe them?” he asked.

      “Oh yes! It’s a popular hobby. People do this all over the place.”

      “What’s in this ‘container’?”

      “Umm… I don’t know yet. There’s a log book that we sign…”

      “Gabby! What are you doing? Watch for the light!” Twiggy called up from below the bridge.

      “And some little things so we can trade if we want to.”

      “Things?”

      “Yeah, like little toys, foreign coins, erasers, that kind of thing.”

      “Why do you do this?”

      “Just ‘cause it’s fun.”

      I wasn’t doing a very good job of explaining it to him. I thought I might know more about geocaching in a day or two but right now I could only tell him the very basics.

      “Gabby! Where are you?”

      “Who is that?” the officer asked.

      “My friend. He’s looking under the bridge and I’m look on top.”

      “Well, be careful. That bridge has rotten boards. The residents have reinforced it but there are still places a person could fall through.”

      “Okay, I’ll watch for the reinforced spots then.”

      “Have fun.”

      “You too… stay safe,” I said.

      He tipped his hat as he went back to his car and I breathed a sigh of relief.

      “Sorry!” I said as I found the hole again. “The police showed up!”

      “What!”

      “He just wanted to warn me about the bridge having rotten boards.”

      “Did you tell him you knew about them?”

      “No, because then he would think it was even more unsafe.”

      “Good. Now watch for the light.”

      Ten minutes later, “This isn’t working. Maybe the man was taller than me. Maybe I should be down there and you should be up here.”

      “It’s worth a try. I’m getting hungry. We need to find this thing soon.”

      Twiggy waded to the river bank and we met half way and handed off the headlamp. I climbed down to the water again, then slip-slided my way under the bridge. Twiggy took his position above and I looked around for the spot of sky through the hole.

      “I see the hole,” I said. “Do you see me?”

      He walked around until we were looking at each other through the hole.

      “AHhhh! Catfish!” he yelled.

      “Where?!” I exclaimed, then promptly jerked around, slipped, and fell waist deep in the river.

      “Okay, it’s gone now,” he said.

      “Ha, ha, very funny,” I stammered as I attempted to stand. “That helped our search ever so much. The catfish swallowed the flashlight.” I brought the headlamp up out of the water and tried to turn it on. “I don’t think they planned on this being used on scuba dives.”

      “Oh shoot. Now what are we going to do?” he asked.

      “I guess we will have to rough it and find it on geosenses alone.”

      He climbed down and we searched the underside of the bridge again but there were so many dark spaces under the bridge that there were hundreds of places to search and to reach them we had to stand on slippery rocks. I couldn’t reach most of the timbers of the bridge so I gave up and began looking amongst the rocks on the bank. Then I couldn’t help but remember that glint that came through the hole so I searched the top of the bridge and ended up with my arm through the hole in the bridge again. So far every car that had come through had been very slow, so I wasn’t worried about being run over, just making the neighbors think I was crazy. I didn’t mind being a crazy person to somebody I’d never see again. I reached, groped, probed. I found a stick and poked it around. I was just about to give up when the stick hit something metal and I heard a clunk, tink, tunk, tuuummbbble, splash. I yanked the stick out and lay face down trying to see what fell. All I could see was river rocks and water. I was so excited about maybe finally finding the cache that I dashed down to the river bank and saw a cracker tin with a mirror glued to one side lopsidedly floating down the river.

      “Get it!” I exclaimed as I slipped over the slick rocks. “It’s getting away!”

      The cracker tin seemed to mock us in slow motion as it quietly floated away. Little currents would grab the corner of the mirror and make it turn lazily as we half dashed, half swam down the river. The tin had a head start.

      “Slow down you crazy r…” I stepped into a fishing hole and disappeared under the surface. I came up sputtering and attempting to swim.

      “Don’t worry,” Twiggy said. “The farmer said there was a log jam ahead. It’ll get stuck there.”

      “Why is it floating if it’s metal?” I asked.

      “Because it’s full of air?”

      “Oh, yeah, hehe. I hope it doesn’t leak.”

      We waded to the river bank and followed the river until we reached the log jam. Luckily it was only a small one so we were able to walk out onto a log and survey the river upstream from us. I noticed that the log was very worn, like children played at the river bank, and fished for spooky catfish and trout. Seeing the worn spots on the log made the river seem a friendlier