Category Proposal: Natural Things

[+The Forester]

I propose a Category to be placed under the "Things" root Category, to be called "Natural Things".

 

Natural Things shalll include animal, vegetable, and mineral things, as well as natural phenomena, such as astronomical and meteorological pheneomena.

 

I further propose a sub-Category (not a Waymark), under the proposed Natural Things category, to be called "Trees".

 

Cheers, The Forester

[+WascoZooKeeper]

Wow, I could log a few thousand waymarks in the forest preserve down the street from me!

 

Or a few hundred right on my own property!

 

Seriously, though, this seems pretty vague. unless there's something more specific and unique proposed.

 

Not sure how you'd waymark natural phenomena, either? What's the lat/long of the Perseid meteor showers? And since they're ephemeral, how would someone log the same event you waymarked?

[+Beast of Traal]

this could be a broad category under the things category though but not one that waymarks can go directly under as it stands right now.

subcategories under it could be National champion trees or meteor crators.

[+The Forester]

Wow, I could log a few thousand waymarks in the forest preserve down the street from me!

It's a Category and a sub-Category that I'm proposing here, not a Waymark.

 

Not sure how you'd waymark natural phenomena, either?

 

Example: Let's say someone creates a Waymark under the proposed Category of "Natural Things" called "Estuarine Tidal Bores". These are natural phenomena which are quite spectacular and very specifically geographic and very photogenic. (unlike yellow gas guzzlers ) A detailed list of observed Tidal Bores could be of interest to those who are interested in such natural phenomena.

 

Another hypothetical example: Let's say someone is interested in Aurorae Australis/Borealis and creates a Waymark for such phenomena In such a case the date and time and location of the photographed and observation might well be of interest to some who are interested in such phenomena.

 

I'm not proposing a Waymark about Trees. I'm proposing that a Category called Natural Things be accepted and I'm proposing that a sub-Category of "Trees" be accepted. Within that sub-Category, there is plenty of scope for imaginative Waymarks (formerly known as "locationless geocaches") to be created which relate to the very wide topic of Trees.

 

Cheers, The Forester

Please second my proposal --- or I'll send llamas to fold back their ears against yer general direction and hiss at ya!

[+balloonatic]

I'm not proposing a Waymark about Trees. I'm proposing that a Category called Natural Things be accepted and I'm proposing that a sub-Category of "Trees" be accepted. Within that sub-Category, there is plenty of scope for imaginative Waymarks (formerly known as "locationless geocaches") to be created which relate to the very wide topic of Trees.

 

So under the sub-Category of Trees you would create sub-Categories of things like Funky Trees, Tree Houses, Tree Bark, Tree Food (food made from Trees), Log Houses, Lumber Mills, Furniture, What's the best Wood to Burn??

 

Not sure where your going with this?

 

What kind of category would we find at the very bottom of the Tree tree?

[+FtMgAl]

I like the idea since I see many cache logs where people mention specific special trees that they noticed on the way. Usually it is a large hollow trunk or such but I also made a special effort once to pick a specific pine tree for logging a locationless. Very photogenic.

 

Hard to govern but the idea has merit.

[+graveyard mom]

There already is a locationless for those pointing trees(can't find the url at the moment), and I have a thing about taking photos of really huge old trees, so with those in mind I do like that idea.

(we have a running family joke thing where I have been taking pix of my kid in front of really strange trees ever since she was a baby-I can just stick the GPSr in her hand now!).

[+Robespierre]

In Dec. '03 I tried very hard to get permission to place a simple cache in a safe place at Johnson Woods State Nature Preserve near Orville Ohio. It is 200+ acres. largest group of 3-400 year-old-trees in the State. So, it would fit nicely in this category. OTH, a cache with a pitchfork grown into a Cedar, which would also fit this category was recently turned down and re-worked and listed with a physical cache.

[+The Forester]

So under the sub-Category of Trees you would create sub-Categories of things like Funky Trees, Tree Houses, Tree Bark, Tree Food (food made from Trees), Log Houses, Lumber Mills, Furniture, What's the best Wood to Burn??

No.

 

The intention of the proposed sub-Category of "Trees" is to enable people to create interesting Locationlesses (sorry, "Waymarks") which invite logs (no pun intended) on specific special cases.

 

For example: Ancient Trees. This would be open to entries about very very very old living trees, perhaps the reputedly oldest in a State/Country/Continent.

 

For example: Historically important trees. To qualify, such a tree would have to have a reputed history of being closely and directly associated with some event such as the signing of a Treaty or perhaps being part of the definition of an international boundary (several of these mark the boundaries of African coountries, BTW).

 

For example: Moon Trees. There are, throughout the world, something like 400 trees which were germinated from seeds carried by the pilot of the Command Module of Apollo 14 in orbit around the Moon several dozen times. One of the trees which grew from those seeds is in the grounds of the White House, but there are hundreds more out there somewhere -- not only in all States of the Union but also in countries as diverse as Brazil, Switzerland, the UK, and Japan. There exists no central record of where those trees are -- yet! I think that the worldwide geocaching community is uniquely well placed to find those 400 trees and to log them and their locations together with photographs and other descriptive documentation. Because the pilot's project was a personal one (a fellow crew member carried a bag of golfballs to play the world's(?) most expensive round of golf on the Moon) and not a formal scientific experiment, NASA did not have a follow-through documentation process to track the placement and survival of those extremely unusual trees.

 

I don't know of any other worldwide community other than geocachers which is so well placed and so diverse and so well "organised" (if that's the word!) as geocachers to create a central repositary of georeferenced and photographed and descriptively documented logs (oops! that word again!!) of these exceptional trees.

 

Cheers, The Forester

Edited August 17, 2005 by The Forester

[+hammerjane]

How about a sub-category of natural bridges or would that be too much like an earthcache?

[+KKTH3]

I guess the other way to look at it is to look for the endpoints of the catalog trees (no pun intended) such as "moon trees" and place that under "natural things."

 

Later on more waypoints may be created that are very specific and defined, but still have a tree theme such as "oldest tree in the state" or "trees with tunnels through them" or "trees that are structural support for an occupied building"

 

Once there are enough subcategories under Natural Things that have a common tie throughout them, the intermediate category "Trees" can be made. In otherwords, I think rather than looking for organizing general subcategories first, we should focus on the specific logable waymarks first and then once we have enough of them that are similar they can be grouped into a subcategory for easier organization.

 

As as side note, perhaps there can be "redirects" within the directory. For example, under the buildings category there might be a section that reads '"trees that are structural support for an occupied building," see Things>Natural Things>Trees>trees that are structural support for an occupied building' with the underlined part being a hyperlink. This way if someone looks for a category and starts off on the wrong brance of the category tree they can get back on track.

[+BeachBuddies]

Current Locationless caches related to trees include:

 

Millennium Trees

Moon Trees

Native American Trail Trees

Edited August 17, 2005 by BeachBuddies

[+The Forester]

Not sure how you'd waymark natural phenomena, either? What's the lat/long of the Perseid meteor showers? And since they're ephemeral, how would someone log the same event you waymarked?

Good point.

 

I'd say that under the proposed Things>Natural Things>Natural Phenonema> Astronomical Phenomena category chain there ought to be a condition that the natural phenonon observation claimed has some kind of geographic significance.

 

For example, the Perseids and Leonids can be seen from any dark sky site at the right time of year, so the co-ords of such an observation are not particularly interesting. and I would exclude such a log.

 

On the other hand, a full solar eclipse is highly dependent upon one's location on the Earth's surface, so would be a valid claim for such a waymark.

 

A good observation, with a photograph or two, of Aurora Borealis/Australis would qualify because such observations are dependent upon one's location at the time of observation. It could be iunterseting to compare ligs recorded by people in disparate locations who have seen the same Aurora display from different vewpoints.

 

Cheers, The Forester

[+Tharagleb]

Don't see how you can waypoint animals either. But the trees idea is good. IMHO.