{"id":11408,"date":"2020-04-25T18:55:17","date_gmt":"2020-04-26T00:55:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=11408"},"modified":"2020-05-16T10:23:54","modified_gmt":"2020-05-16T16:23:54","slug":"geocaching-for-weirdness-other-psychogeography","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=11408","title":{"rendered":"Geocaching for Weirdness & Other Psychogeography"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Randonauts

A screenshot of the Randonautica app<\/p><\/div>\n

Wednesday was the first nice day in a while, so M. and I went hiking on some national forest land near home. We were on a “social trail,” one that is not signed and listed on the forest maps, but we saw maybe four other people there anyway. I stopped partway up to repair a geocache<\/a> container \u2014 not a cache that I own, but one that has been more or less abandoned by its owners. I feel affection for it because it was the first one that I ever found, so I check on it now and then.<\/p>\n

What keeps a lot of geocachers going is not the sheer numbers of caches that they find, but the places that the sport (or hobby) takes them.((Geocaching is a “sport” in that it has rules, and you can be competitive about numbers and categories if you want to be. On the other hand, since I most often do it alone, perhaps it is more a “hobby” or a “pursuit.”)) What they often mention is how caching takes them to unexpcted places that they never knew existed.<\/a><\/p>\n

For me those include a deserted lakeside resort<\/strong> in central North Dakota where an artesian well gushes water from a big rusty pipe, a tiny cemetary in Taos, New Mexico, a cavalryman’s grave on a Wyoming hillside, or an abandoned bridge on the Dismal RIver in Nebraska’s Sand Hills.((You can also find tiny magnetic containers stuck to benches in city parks, but after a while, they are not so special anymore.))<\/p>\n

In a recent episode titled “Force the Hand of Chance: A How-To Guide to Psychogeography<\/a>”\u00a0 on the Strange Familiars<\/em> podcast, co-host Alison Renner mentions how recent conditions have meant she and her husband, Timothy, have been exploring the seen and unseen environment of their hometown more these days.\u00a0 When she remarked about walking down an alley that she had never entered before, it reminded me of geocaching.<\/p>\n

But insead of using a GPS receiver, the Renners were following a route on a cell phone app called Randonautica<\/a>,<\/strong> advertised as “The world’s first quantumly generated Choose Your Own Adventure reality game. Explore the world you never knew existed.”1<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

Randonautica app puts the user in the Director’s Chair of an adventure story yet to be written. By using the app, the user can break from their mundane day-to-day and take a journey of randomness into the world around them.<\/p>\n

Where\u00a0the mind goes, the universe follows. The Randonautica app is built with mind-machine interfacing technology which allows the user to drive their trip simply by thinking.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A user in Cambodia wrote on Reddit<\/a>, “Set my intent to’find a portal to another world’…found an arch that led me to a wealthy gated community. Compared to the poverty that most people here live in, it is certainly another world for them.”<\/p>\n

\"Randonauts

Randonauts Facebook profile graphic<\/p><\/div>\n

Part of the Strange Familiars <\/em>podcast episode is the Renners trying out the Randonautica app and experiencing at least one strong synchronicity. Timothy Renner also utilzes it in an episode called “Synchronicity Storm on Toad Road,<\/a>” although it is mentioned only briefly.<\/p>\n

I had wanted to try it four days ago, but the app needs a cellular data connection, and I live in what amounts to a cell-service dead zone<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

We had things to buy today, so we went to a nearby town and gave it a try. I tried generic requests, such as “anomaly.” The first hit sent us on about a 2.5-mile drive out of town to a certain road \u2014 only I knew that that road led into a gravel-mining operation owned by a local paving company, where we would probably not be welcomed to park and explore. If there is an “anomaly” there, it will have to wait.<\/p>\n

Our second run took us a newish subdivision out in the desert. It was amazing that Apple Maps knew the roads, since they were just bulldozed dirt, completely unimproved. It looked like we were to drive to the end of one road, park, and climb a small nearby mesa, only this was the sort of place where strange vehicles acting strangely are regarded with acute suspicion. So I canceled that quest too.<\/p>\n

But I want to go back, maybe try a more specific request than just “void” or “anomaly,” and most of all, I would rather do it mostly on foot. I want to see if Randonautica leads me to sites of low-to-moderate strangeness.<\/p>\n

Even geocachers experience strangeness.If you join and go to the discussion forums, you will find occasional multi-year threads with titles like “Weird or What?” “Help me plant some weird California caches,” “Weird Findings in the Woods,” “Animals are acting weird,” “Weird Adventure,” “What’s that Weird Noise?” and so on.<\/p>\n

But what if you don’t want to walk around looking at a screen?<\/h2>\n

<\/a>Maybe you think that the Randonautica approach is too impersonal. Maybe you want to really make contact with the genius locii.<\/em><\/a> So take a look at Sarah Kate Istra Winter’s book The City is a Labyrinth: A Walking Guide for Urban Animists.<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

She writes,<\/p>\n

All by itself, the act of walking puts you in a liminal state \u2014 neither here nor there but in between. This makes it especially suitable for spiritual and mystical purposes, where we are already seeking to draw back the veil between the worlds for a momeny and interact with the gods and spirits . . . . Going out on intentional walks as a means of discovering and honoring the spirits of place in a city can take myriad forms.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

She has much to say about whom you might encounter and how to interact with them \u2014 all in a compact book that will fit into your hip pocket. And if you sit on it, it won’t butt-dial anyone.<\/p>\n

Continued in Part 2 here.<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

  1. There is a forum on Reddit, of course: r\/randonauts<\/a>, and a Facebook group<\/a>. [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li><\/ol>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Wednesday was the first nice day in a while, so M. and I went hiking on some national forest land near home. We were on a “social trail,” one that is not signed and listed on the forest maps, but we saw maybe four other people there anyway. I stopped partway up to repair a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[82,113,233,379,22],"class_list":["post-11408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-fairies","tag-gods-of-the-city","tag-pilgrimage","tag-psychogeography","tag-weirdness"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-2Y0","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":11459,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=11459","url_meta":{"origin":11408,"position":0},"title":"Geocaching for Weirdness – 2","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 16, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Part 1 is here. Using the Randonautica app near home is impossible for me, due to the lack of reliable ceullar data service, but I kept reading posts on the Facebook page and on r\/randonauts at Reddit. Then two days ago I had some free time in Pueblo while M.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"divination\"","block_context":{"text":"divination","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=divination"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/rabbit-swing.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1256,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1256","url_meta":{"origin":11408,"position":1},"title":"J.K. Rowlings’ Effect on Our Language","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 25, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Recently M. and I started to experiment with geocaching. Since our rural home is adjacent to national forest land and located just off a designated Scenic Byway, it is a fertile spot\u2014there must be a dozen or more caches within five miles.But what I noticed when reading geocaching sites and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"weirdness\"","block_context":{"text":"weirdness","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=weirdness"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":13731,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=13731","url_meta":{"origin":11408,"position":2},"title":"‘Small Gods’ Is a Zine about Animism","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 25, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"Small Gods issue 1, 2024 Edited by Dver, a.k.a. Sarah Kate Istra Winter, Small Gods: An Anthology of Everyday Animism is projected to be an annual zine \"featuring art, poetry, and essays describing our relationship with, and giving praise to, the smallest of gods \u2014\u00a0those spiritual entities who are closely\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"animism\"","block_context":{"text":"animism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=animism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/small-gods-1-cover.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1286,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1286","url_meta":{"origin":11408,"position":3},"title":"Dark of the Moon","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 16, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"I tend to get into some bad places psychologically when it's the dark of the Moon and work is not going well. \"No one respects me, no one pays any attention to what I say\"\u2014that sort of thing.The best cure is to take a dog (who may or may not\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"dogs\"","block_context":{"text":"dogs","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=dogs"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12523,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=12523","url_meta":{"origin":11408,"position":4},"title":"A Libation for the Mother River","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 28, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"I wrote earlier about the hitchhiker whom I called Travis, a post writen on the 19th of October, mostly at the Twenty Below coffeehouse in Fargo, North Dakota, waiting to drive an old friend home to his tiny prairie town after he had been poked and prodded and MRI'd all\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"animism\"","block_context":{"text":"animism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=animism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/missouri-at-fort-pierre-300x188.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1276,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1276","url_meta":{"origin":11408,"position":5},"title":"Cattle Mutilations and Occult Weirdness","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 25, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"A recent \"cattle mutilation\" report had the gang at Querencia turning to me, because evidently I am their go-to guy on weirdness.After a couple of weeks had passed, I cranked out a four-part blog post series at my other blog:Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.But I left\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Colorado\"","block_context":{"text":"Colorado","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=colorado"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11408"}],"version-history":[{"count":33,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11408\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11462,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11408\/revisions\/11462"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}