Nötknäckarkalendern 2010-06 Cachemas Time Again Mystery Cache

It's Christmas Time Again

It's getting closer day by day. Soon it's here. It's Christmas time again.
It can not be disputed that all but a few in our part of the world know of and have personal relationship to Christmas. Whats, on the other hand, is known to a comparably few is that Father Christmas has a less known younger brother, the much loved Reginald Claus or as he is also known, Father Cachemas.

Father Cachemas

According to legend Father Cachemas travels around the world the same way as his older brother on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. But instead of bringing gifts to well behaved children he visit geocachers all around the world bringing them unlogged cache containers in different sizes. These will usually be opened directly on the evening of the 24th or on the morning of the 25th making their new owners rejoice as they log their new First Time Finds.
Geocachers who have performed more than well over the last year might even find small tokens of appreciation inside, like Travel-Bugs and Geo Coins.
In some countries there is also a tradition on the second day after Christmas, where people take their new caches and go in larger groups from house to house. There is a lot of joy and laughter as the new finds are inspected and admired by neighbors, family and friends. A lot of Second Time Finds and Third Time Finds are also made and logged at these gatherings. This day is usually referred to as Boxing Day.

The Cachemas Tree

The Latin name of the Cachemas Tree is Picea arca. Sadly to say there is little more scientific information to be found. A search for “Picea arca” on Google for example yields very few results indeed. Information and facts must therefore mostly be based on oral sources. So far the following facts can be thought to be relatively accurate and seems to be accepted by most leading Cachemas Tree authorities.

• The Cachemas Tree is a very scarce plant. You are very lucky if you ever see one. One of the reasons for this, except for high demands on soil and climate, is that it cannot grow closer to another Cachemas Tree than 161 meters. The reason for this is still not fully understood.
• The Cachemas Tree is quite hard to distinguish from an ordinary Christmas tree (the Picea abies in Sweden). One of the major differences is that the Cachemas tree always encodes the coordinates where it grows in some way or another. It is thought that these coordinates are used in some still unknown way to prohibit the growth of a Cachemas Tree seed closer than the previous mentioned 161 meters.
• As the name implies the Cachemas Tree can be used as a geocache container holding a log, a pen and various trading items.

There is no Cachemas tree to be found at the published coordinates

This has been a fun first year of caching.
I wish you all a Merry Christmas!