That may not be a popular view, especially on the listserver,
but I think it is the correct view. If I owned one of those caches, I'd be
down in Mesa as fast as I could be, to retrieve the ammo can, hand deliver a
personal letter of apology, and find out who to talk to about obtaining
permission for a possible future placement. But I think trying to "push back"
on those that were confiscated will do nothing except alienate us further in
the eyes of those who make these decisions.
Geocaching doesn't have a lot of rules; it's time we started
playing by the few we do have.
I'm going to go
there tomorrow and retrieve our cache. Mind you I have no problem with
what they did, they are perfectly within their right to do this. I doubt
I'll take the time to print out a letter of apology, but I will talk to
whoever is there, and apologize to them for not getting a permit and find out
if I can get one, either now or in the future. I placed this almost a
year ago, (at the time was blatantly ignorant on many of the issues) and
really most of the discussion we have had about this was since the article in
the Republic...it may not be a correct view, and in fact I'm willing to admit
that it isn't but I kind of figured as long as no one was saying anything
about it, this cache was being "Grandfathered" in, so to speak.
I wonder how many
caches out there on Nat'l Forest Land, BLM land, etc., even the Goldwater
area...were considered "Grandfathered" by the owners...in other words, it's
already there, and no one has removed it, I don't need to do anything.
I'd be willing to
bet that there are at least 400 caches in city parks in Arizona...which
is public land, I doubt very many of those owners have gotten
permission to place those as well - I have one in a city park and did not get
permission. I'm not saying this is correct. I would also be
willing to bet that out of 1133 active caches in Arizona, at least 80% of them
don't have permission from the proper agency to have them there...a street
light pole is public property, so are signs, benches, dog poop disposal
units, garbage cans, electrical equipment, playground equipment, and
trees in a public park, a light pole in a store parking lot is private
property, so is a fence...I've found over 300 caches, I could go on and
on. Many caches are located at these sights, or they have permanent ink
writting on them giving coordinates for the next leg of a
multi-cache.
I'd say that held
to the standard of obtain permission on all public or private property, most
of us would have a lot of letters and work to do in the next few
weeks.
Thanks,
Joe
TeamBlunder