The very first Found and Lost story has been moved 622.8 miles from Port Townsend, WA to Grass Valley, CA, where it has been placed in a cache called Zed’s Find by a professional juggler named Barry. Barry is the husband of Ann, one of my former Goddard students. Here’s what Barry looks like:
So let’s recap how this works. When Juan TB33NX9 is retrieved from Zed’s Find I’ll get an email alert (given that the geocacher logs their possession of the story on geocaching.com). But here’s the cool thing–Barry can sign up to be alerted as well. So we’ll both be notified that somebody new possesses the story, and when that new person drops the story off in another cache, they can choose to be apprised of its whereabouts as well. Each person who reads this particular copy of this story will form a community of sorts, a series of readers stretching forward through time, all of us kept in the loop as the story travels around the world. And we’ll all be able to look at a nifty map showing where the story has traveled.
It dawned on me tonight as I drove home from teaching a short story class that I’m going to meet a lot of people through this project. Some I’ll just know by their handles, others may become friends, who knows. I’m certain very few of them will be able to fit five or six ping pong balls in their mouths. As the Found and Lost project becomes a full-blown series, the proliferation of characters in the stories will be mirrored by the proliferation of the characters who come across the stories in the real world. Maybe I’ll be inspired to turn some of them into characters in the stories themselves. Hmm…
Thanks again, Barry!
Found and Lost 