Where is the hidden treasure box?

Kid: “I’m looking over and over again and I can’t find it. Maybe it’s somewhere else?”
Adult: “Keep looking, it has to be here.”
Kid: “But, it’s not.”
Adult: “It can’t be anywhere else!”

This weekend I took my kids geo-caching. Geo-caching is a game where you get the latitude and longitude of a treasure box along with a few hints. The treasure box is usually hidden somewhere clever like hanging in a tree or in a crevice under a bench. Once you find the box its customary to take a trinket out and put a new one in. Basically, it’s a fun treasure hunt in city parks, suburban streets and hikes all across the globe. It’s a wildly fun adventure for kids of all ages – geocaching.com.

This weekend I found myself really stuck. According to my gps app the treasure box was in an area with only one possible hiding area, a low bush with thick branches and lots of room underneath. My kids and I scoured the bush. I even sent them on their bellies under the bush to scour for the box. I must have pulled apart every branch in a desperate search for the treasure box. After about 30 minutes of searching the same areas over and over again I came to the conclusion that someone had moved the treasure box. Obviously if we couldn’t find it, it wasn’t there. Funny, enough there was another family in the same desperate search. All of us tugging at this poor bush for something that clearly wasn’t there.

We gave up and decided to move on to the next geo-cache. As we mounted our bikes we heard yelling. The other family had found it. We turned around immediately. But, the other family wasn’t by the bush, they were at the base of a very large metal lamppost. What? I didn’t even remember seeing the lamppost when I arrived. The treasure box was hidden under the base of the lamp post. Duh!

I got it totally stuck in my head that the treasure was in the bush that I didn’t even see the lamppost. It’s funny how sometimes we get one way of thinking so engrained in our heads that we aren’t able to see all the possibilities.

Remember, the next time you are looking at the same bush over and over again, back up and see what else is possible. If I had just taken three steps back to look at my surroundings, I may have noticed the lamppost.

Don’t get so stuck in one solution that you can’t see the others. Always look around.

And kudos to the other family for finding the treasure!