CHANCES are, when you started geocaching you stepped in to a ready-made playing field. Several caches were already established in your area and your first experience was simply heading out and finding them. When it came time for you to hide a cache of your own, you took into consideration your experiences of searching for other caches and your knowledge of the area you live in.

Enter Waymarking, a new GPS game from Groundspeak. Waymarking builds off of the fun and success of geocaching, but offers a new venue for listing locations on our planet. While your geocaching experience likely began with caches that others had hidden before you, with Waymarking you have the opportunity to pioneer this new game.

The impetus behind Waymarking was the need to handle virtual and locationless caches differently. As Jeremy Irish has stated, "Physical caches are the basis of the activity. Virtual caches were created due to the inaccessibility of caching in areas that discourage it." As geocaching evolved, virtual caches became detrimental to the placement of physical caches in many areas. Also, locationless caches simply didn't fit in with the overall scheme of an activity whose basis is in locations.

But geocachers loved the idea behind virtual and locationless caches. Finding unique locations and unusual out-of-the-way sights is a big part of the fun behind the game. So Groundspeak put their minds and talent to the task of finding a way to categorize and catalog these locations around our planet. The result is Waymarking.com and it takes the language of location to a whole new level!

Giving Locations a Voice

As with geocaching, waymarking uses GPS technology to pinpoint locations on earth. However, in contrast to Geocaching.com, the Waymarking.com database is designed to organize unique information about each given location. Whereas Geocaching.com allows users to search out specific types of caches (traditional, multi, mystery, etc.) and sizes (micro, regular, large, etc.) the Waymarking.com database organizes its contents based on a series of categories that range from the general to the specific.

There are three basic categories learned playing charade: People, Places and Things. Everything that can be waymarked falls into one of these three root categories. From there, the subcategories get more specific. For example, what kind of "Places" are we looking for? Is it an historic place, a natural place, a military place or a strange/weird place? The subcategories break the waymarks down into more manageable bits.

At this level, waymarking resembles the old locationless caches from Geocaching.com. With locationless caches (also known as reverse caches), the cache owner chooses a topic rather than a location. The now infamous Yellow Jeep Fever cache required the "finder" to locate a yellow Jeep somewhere on the planet and Waypoint its location. Other locationless caches required finders to locate unusual formations like natural arches or rare manmade objects like drive-in movie theaters. With the new Waymarking site, these would be given their own subcategories.

One of my own geocaches takes finders to our family cemetery. It's a beautiful spot that has always meant a lot to me and I wanted to share it with other cachers. One particularly interesting feature of the cemetery is a grave of a Revolutionary War veteran. While these might be more common in other locations, here in the Midwest, they are very rare. I've had cachers comment about the grave and even return with friends just to show it to them.

It occurred to me that it would be nice to have a way to catalog Revolutionary War graves throughout the country. If such a database existed, it could be useful for history buffs as well as for educational purposes. With waymarking, it's simply a matter of creating the category "American Revolutionary War Veteran Graves," setting up the instructions for logging these locations, and giving people the goal of finding them via Waymarking.com!

Making Your Mark on the World

Let's suppose you know the location of a grave of an American Revolutionary War solder. Adding it to the waymarking category is a simply a matter of visiting the gravesite, taking the reading with your GPS and then setting up your own waymark page underneath the "American Revolutionary War Veteran Graves," category.

Your addition to the category becomes your waymark. At this level, waymarking resembles the virtual caches from Geocaching.com. Your waymark page will take people to a specific location that you have chosen. People who visit your waymark will log their finds on your page much in the same way that geocaches are logged online.

Getting There

So you've got the concept down. You understand what a waymark is and how to log one, but how do you go about finding one? To do that will require two tools; one supplied by the website the other supplied by you. One is the Location Filter and the other is your imagination.

The Location Filter works much like the Geocaching.com search page. It enables you to search for established waymarks within the radius of your home coordinates or by postal code. If you are traveling to another area and are interested in logging some waymarks while there, this filter enables you to do so. Of course, this early in the game, the location filter is still in its infancy. It's very likely that nothing has been waymarked in your home area yet. However, as the database grows, so will the usefulness of the filter.

As for establishing new waymarks of your own, that will require your imagination paired with your knowledge of what is available in your area. As you look through the established categories in the directory, keep an eye out for locations you know of that will fit within those categories. Maybe you know of an outdoor maze somewhere in your area or a gigantic statue of an everyday object. Either of these would fit within a waymarking category. A good part of the fun for you in this game might be discovering more about your home area and making these local landmarks available to others.

Did You Mark the Way?

In geocaching, we often look back to the mountain men who would store their supplies in secret "caches" in the woods. This practice inspired the name chosen for the game we've grown to love. In a similar way, the early pioneers who blazed the trails across North America would often "mark the way" by pointing out the locations of natural springs, places of shelter and even unusual land and rock formations. These spots served as markers for others who would follow that way and rely on the experience of those who had gone before.

The names they chose for those locations expressed the wonder and whimsy with which they observed the world around them. Names like "Needles," "Plume Rock," and even "Old Faithful" are not only expressions of what they saw but are also expressions of their imagination. Maybe the waymarks you choose to find and share with others will pass on some of that same spirit of discovery and the excitement of seeing something new and unusual.