Sometimes I get high and go geocaching

Sometimes I get high is a series about the activities you do or think about when you are high, in great detail, for fun.

When I was little, I hid behind the couch on the first floor of our dilapidated house with piles of books and snacks and went on adventures like only a child can. I got lost in stories of intrepid travelers like Dido Twite, the heroine of Joan Aikens The Stolen Lake, a gruesome tale about an ancient queen who became immortal through cannibal vampirism. I dreamed of joining a wandering gang of kids like Enid Blyton’s The Secret Seven, who always traveled with great sounding provisions like clotted cream and ginger beer. I loved drawing maps of Narnia, Oz, and Middle-earth.

Hidden behind the maroon and mustard flowered velvet sofa with a bowl of grapes dipped in sour cream and brown sugar (the most delicious snack ever) felt like a true globetrotter.

In my twenties, I got the best summer job I ever had – working as a sailor on a laughing tender in Southeast Alaska. One of my favorite parts of the job was keeping watch while driving. Huge paper charts were scattered across the wheelhouse, marking rapids and rocks and exciting secret bays. Occasionally the crew had a day off and we all got on the boat to explore a remote island. I gathered bones and salmon teeth and sea glass to carry to New York City, where I lined the bookshelf of my studio apartment with all my treasures.

When I moved to Los Angeles in 2016, I was overwhelmed by the city. Fortunately, I worked for a cannabis media company and an abundance of top notch weed flowed through our offices. In the evenings I got stoned and wandered my new neighborhood, feeling more connected to the energy of the city night after night. It was June. Purple jacaranda and jasmine were in bloom, and animals were everywhere – coyotes, possums, skunks, hawks, even a resident mountain lion in Griffith Park. Taking a drop of tincture or an edible and getting lost in the streets and canyons of LA eased my homesickness for the East Coast.

My new life in California got a lot brighter when I met Mike Glazer. I was working on a big weed event for the media business. Mike got high with Snoop Dogg, met sloths, and did cool, fun things in general. A colleague told me I had to know this guy. She was right. Three years later, Mike and I get high and do cool, fun things a lot. (Check out our Weed + Grub podcast.)

Last year Mike introduced me to something that perfectly combines my love for maps, adventure, and weed: get high and geocaching.

Before Mike showed up on a chilly October evening with a fat joint in hand and an invitation to “do something really funny with me,” all I knew was that geocaching was for nerds. And listen, I’m a total nerd – I rode a tricycle when I was eight, for heaven’s sake – but geocaching felt too nerdy myself. Maybe the Law & Order: SVU episode where geocachers found a body spoiled my vision. Something in Benson’s and Stabler’s disdain for the two guys made me wince. Geocaching was for Internet forum freaks with money to blow on portable GPS devices; People with too much time and too few friends. At least I thought so.

I was wrong. Geocaching is the greatest! Or at least geocaching when you’re high is the biggest thing. When Mike appeared on my stairs with a joint of the Haze delicacy he’d rolled up, his eyes were all sparkling, and not just from the grass. “Come on, I want to show you something,” he said and waved me out into the freezing cold October night. I put on a hoodie and sneakers and followed the smoke trail behind him. We strolled amicably through the dark streets for a while, panting, chatting and getting ready. When we got to Melrose Avenue, which was eerie in the silence of the pandemic, Mike pulled up an app on his phone. When I looked at his screen, I got a familiar, happy tingle in my stomach – it was a card.

“It’s about to be here,” he told me with his typical Grinning Cat grin. “What was?” I asked. “Honey,” he replied and began to disappear before my eyes. Man, that was great weed. I took his cell phone. Geocaches around us have been listed by size, type, difficulty and terrain. The indicator showed that we were basically on one. I felt like I was on Star Trek, being beamed to a new planet, trying to figure out what was a life form around me. Mike had already found the cache, so he stepped back and watched me search through it. The app had a few hints: This was an “attractive” geocache, and I was advised to “tie the shoe”. I circled a trash can. Nothing. I looked up and down a bus stop for Cedars Sinai Hospital (“You are the reason we get through this”). Nada. I bent down to tie my shoe and made eye contact with a rat who looked quite fond of his french fries dinner. I felt related to him.

As the rat and I stared at each other, I noticed something under the bus stop bench. There was a magnetic key holder under the seat. Magnetic … is attractive! That’s it! I opened the little box. It was full of tiny treasures: a ring, a sticker, a strange little pig – it felt like I had discovered lost Inca gold. “Take something, leave something,” said Mike. I felt my pockets. I had nothing with me except a Stone Road weed brand pin on my hoodie. “Is that OK?” Mike nodded. “More than okay.” I chose the weird little pig and replaced it with the pin.

And just like that, I was hooked. Mike and I search the whole city for secret hiding spots when we’re stoned. Our biggest find was the smallest of them all: a “nano” cache the size of a button, 2.50 m on the side of a power pole. It contained a tiny scroll with initials and dates that went back six or seven years. We cheered and roared and danced around when we found this. Deep in the woods above Monterey we found a lunch box full of pretty little tchotchkes and in a neighbor’s garden a film canister full of trinkets. We’re trying to figure out how to get to a geocache at the bottom of a lake next.

Weed has always been my favorite way to reconnect my adult brain to my child self. Geocaching is the perfect pastime to satisfy this kid’s love of treasure and adventure. It’s a magical, nerdy combination. Plus, my pockets are now always filled with fun things. And weeds, of course.

Featured image by Gina Coleman / Weedmaps