Ken Black crashed through the undergrowth, avoiding above-ground tree roots, half-exposed rocks and hundreds of mosquitoes.
Black is out for treasure.
But the treasure he's seeking isn't your typical pirate's booty - it's a cache. And it's part a growing pastime called geocaching.
A cache is a hidden container filled with trinkets, a historical place or an unusual geological feature. The position of these caches can be found by logging in the coordinates into a handheld Global Positioning System, or GPS, receiver helping seekers find the hidden locations.
Geocaching has about 179,882 active caches in 215 countries.
"It's kind of like a big treasure hunt," said Andrew Garinger, former MSU student and creator of the Spartan Cache in the Baker Woodlot on Farm Lane. He said the sport isn't difficult once players have a GPS.
Phil Steteler, mobile supervisor for Best Buy, 2020 W. Grand River Ave. in Okemos, said there has been an increase in purchasing of GPS receivers in recent years, but not just for geocaching.
"There's a lot more interest out there," he said. "Some folks want it for driving, some want it for camping, hunting or whatever."
Hand-held GPS receivers range from $119 to $1,200, Steteler said.
The sport began in May 2000 after former President Bill Clinton released a statement allowing civilians to use GPS receivers with a much higher accuracy than before. The first cache was hidden in Oregon in celebration of the technology improvements.
There are two active caches on campus and one that is disabled because of the "Sparty" statue move.
The rule to finding a cache is that if a seeker takes an item from it, another item has to be left in return.
Anyone can make a cache as long as it is reported to www.geocaching.com and maintained by the person who has hidden it.
To organize the locations and for information on caches and geocaching, treasure hunters can visit the Web site, which provides coordinates for locations all over the globe. The site rates the difficulty of finding the cache, gives a short description, a printable map and forum about people's cache-finding experiences. Some are located on mountains, urban settings and even underwater.
"You can find geocaches where ever anyone was willing to put one," Garinger said. "I know of one on an uninhabited island in the middle of Lake Michigan."
Garinger said there is at least one geocache in each of the 50 states and he found one in Ireland. There are caches in the United Kingdom, Iceland and Newfoundland, too.
The main attraction for many children are the toys inside the caches, Garinger said. They can be almost anything small, such as key chains, pencils, rubber balls, little plastic figures and toy cars.
"Kids like the prizes," Black, a 55-year-old, said. "Most of us my age are not in it for the stuff."
Enclosed in each cache is a logbook for visitors to sign and sometimes special items, such as travel bugs or geocoins.
Travel bugs are special items with a metal tag attached showing a trackable code. The code can be entered on www.geocaching.com/track where people can track a certain item's progress. Geocoins have a code that can be entered on several different sites, depending on the state from which the coin originated.
There are guidelines as to what can be put in a cache. Adult items, fireworks, food and weapons are forbidden. There are also guidelines stipulating that the cache should not disrupt the environment.
Part of the appeal is getting out and visiting places he would not normally see, Black said.
"I lived in Bath (Township) all my life and found 10 parks we didn't know existed," he said. "It gets us out and about and gives us something to do in interesting places."
Black said many parents like to use it as a family activity and to get their children away from the television.
"I've seen kids in backpacks who are 6 months old," he said.
Black said he and his wife, Leah, have been geocaching since April 2003 and have visited 285 caches.
"We've got 11 states in the country we cached in on and 39 of the Michigan counties," he said. "I can't believe how much traveling we've done."
