Remembering Why I Waymark

Lately I've been a little disgusted with waymarking and haven't been hunting new marks with the gusto that I used to. After so many new chain categories and a few just plain lame ones it was losing the luster that it once had for me.

Well, over the weekend I remembered what it is that I love about the hobby. With Hikenutty Jr. in Wyoming with his grandparents we decided to head up to North Cascades National Park for some camping and hiking. As I thumbed through the well worn pages of "Pacific Northwest Hiking", a hefty bible for Washington and Oregon hikers, I found a hike that looked interesting - tiny little lake in a box canyon, views of glaciated peaks, wildflowers and WHAT's THAT?!!! A rare spot in Washington where carnivorous plants grow?!!! I didn't even know that carnivorous plants grew in the Northwest. I figured they were all down in the south and southeast. I still didn't have a waymark for the "Carnivorous Plant Localities" category so here was my chance.

So I looked up a photo of "drosera anglica" on the Internet and off we went on our camping trip. I figured my chances of actually seeing a small patch of plants located somewhere along 2 miles of steep trail was slim, but hey, it was worth a try and we would still get some great scenery.

The hike was short, but grueling. The first 1/4 mile seemed more like a mountain goat trail than a hiking trail. This was the kind of hiking where arms were needed to help scramble up at places, not just your legs. For the last half of the hike I carefully scanned the nurselogs and tree trunks for anything unusual. I did find an awesome, bright yellow slime mold, and several beautiful types of wildflowers, but no drosera anglica. Oh well. I figured I could always hit the Seattle Conservatory - they have some carnivorous plants. We finally crested the last ridge and below us lay the pristine little lake with Pyramid Peak towering above. We threw down the daypacks and walked over to the lake with the dogs and there on the multitude of logs floating in the lake were scores of drosera anglica plants - tiny little rose hued plants nestled amongst the moss. I was ecstatic! What a find! How cool. I carefully walked out to a patch of plants on one of the floating logs that was lodged in the rocks on one end and squatted down for some macro shots. Somehow I managed to get a bunch of pictures without me or the camera falling into the very deep lake. (My little dog Frodo was not so lucky when he tried to get to a dragonfly. He jumped onto the log before I could stop him and promptly went for an unwanted swim.)

Anyhow, I now have my carnivorous plant waymark and it's one that I am proud of - not just an exercise in filling the grid, but an awesome, memorable experience. I would have taken the hike with our without the waymark waiting for me there at the end, however, I never would have learned about the rare plant life that grew there, or have been watching close enough to see the slime mold or the pipsissewa blossoms, or the funky lichen that I still can't find the name of. I wouldn't have brought along my wildflower guide and learned the names of several flowers that I hadn't seen before. I would have seen the surface and missed all the glorious detail.

So... I'm still irritated by the path that waymarking is continuing to follow due to lack of guidance and fine tuning. However, I'm learning to change the way I waymark, learning to change my mindset when I head out to waymark, and most of all, learning to lighten up because afterall, this is about learning and having fun in the process. If you want to check out my carnivorous waymark, WM4A2X, you'll find more pictures of this interesting plant and the beautiful little lake that it is found on in the ruggedly beautiful North Cascades.

Sounding off on the Seattle Art & Seek

Don't get me wrong, I am a big fan of art waymarking but I have a few problems with the new "Seattle Art & Seek" category. Although I like the fact that Seattle is using waymarking to show off its art, having its own special category doesnt' seem to meld with the direction that waymarking has gone. In fact, I remember several months back a new waymarker in the forums had asked about creating a similar category for Denver's public art and the people of the forums overwhelmingly said no. The reason being is that almost any sculpture or artwork can be waymarked in the existing art categories.

Seattle has an incredible collection of art and a large community of art patrons that make sure that collection continues to grow. Just look at the Olympic Sculpture Park, a park full of world class sculpture that was almost entirely gifted to the community and unlike most parks of this caliber, you don't have to pay to visit it. But I went to Chicago last year and they have a collection that is equally deserving. I'm just back from D.C. and the sculpture there was awesome. My point is that nearly every large city around the world has a collection of art worth waymarking. Do we really want a category for every city's art collection?

Being fond of filling out my waymarking grid, I can't help feeling bad for the other gridders out there who aren't so conveniently located to Seattle as I am. I would be supremely irritated if say, an "Art of Atlanta" or a "Sculpture of Sydney" category started. I started the abstract sculpture category on waymarking.com and the goal was to see public sculpture around the world. There's already a ton of Seattle art in that category, I know because I waymarked a lot of it. Maybe I would have less of a problem if this special waymarking promotional category were a non-grid category. Leave the grid for the categories that have a more global or at the minimum, a national reach. This sets a precedence that I don't want waymarking to follow, and if you read my last post, you'll remember that precedence in waymarking is something that folks oddly hold sacred.

Lastly, the category seems to have been created by a geocacher. What's with the gps photo requirement, huh? Waymarking has happily moved away from the "prove you were there as a waymarker, not a tourist" attitude and now this? Since the category is already in place, I'm not going to get all uptight and boycott it or anything, however, I won't be able to add much to the category because I don't have gps photos of any of the many sculptures that I have waymarked in Seattle. And I'm not going to waste the time and the gas to drive around getting gps photos of things I've already waymarked. I'm not a caching coin addict, so the waymarking coin is not a big enticement for me. Tacoma News Tribune did a waymarking contest (using existing categories) and I won a book there - much more useful.

So there are three artworks in this weeks list of art that I won't be crossposting thanks to the lack of a gps photo: Seattle Mural, Neototems, and Olympic Iliad. Olympic Iliad is shown above. Next time I happen to be up in Seattle for some reason I'll try to find a sculpture to waymark in the area that I'm visiting, but until then I won't be able to participate. I'm a Washingtonian who lives in a suburb of Seattle. I'd love to hear what you Midwesterners and East Coasters think.

Precedence

One of the things that irritates me is this belief that once something has been done on Waymarking.com within a category, or on the Website as a whole, people feel it must always be done that way. You know the argument - "There are already so many fast food categories that it would be unfair to start saying no to new ones," or "we've never allowed that in the category so we can't start now - that would be unfair to people who have had similar waymarks declined." Well big, flippin' WAHHHH. I think people can learn to deal with the change. No one's going to quit waymarking because a category chose to go a different direction, and if they do, well, did we really need such a big baby on the site, anyhow?

Don't get me wrong. Precedence can be very helpful for a group's officers when deciding whether to approve or decline something. If a group has determined a certain borderline type of waymark shouldn't be accepted, it makes it easier to review when that type is posted in the future. But sometimes, when a precedence is regularly being challenged, maybe the group should go back to the drawing board and see if maybe the category requirements need tweaking.

The fast food/commercial waymarking groups are the ones that originally started my pet peeve with this whole issue of precedence. Over and over in the forums I read "but it wouldn't be fair..." Grow up people! Waymarking needs to stay flexible and evolve as the site grows. If something gets tried and doesn't work then move on. Don't continue a bad decision just because it might hurt someone's feelings if the site changed its approach. Most people know my issues with chain waymarking, but I have more of an issue with people who are so rigid that they can't look at the full picture because they are so focused on the "but we've always done it this way" mindset. Be openminded. Look at issues from multiple perspectives. Change will not kill you - trust me.

@#$%ing Forums

Okay, maybe that was a little harsh, but I am extremely frustrated. I haven't been visiting the forums lately because I just couldn't take it anymore. I have a very busy life and when I weigh the time it takes to read the forum posts (due to time outs, etc.) and the enjoyment I get from them, the annoyance of time outs is just too much.

I try to multi-task and work in another window, but even that doesn't make up for the frustration of all the hoops one has to jump through just to read a post. God help me if I want to actually reply to one.

What is most frustrating to me is that I think the forums are an important part of what waymarking is all about. It's a community managed Website - we get to vote and have a say about what categories are created. So communication is key to keeping things growing in a positive direction. The forums are a great place to discuss and learn - IF you can spare the time to try to get the posts to open. I can't and I feel like the result is that I've been cut off from a group of friends.

Anyhow, if you haven't seen me on the forums lately, this is why. My backlog is so huge now that I need to focus on getting waymarks posted when I happen to have a spare moment, not the forums.

The photo above has nothing to do with the forums. It's a photo of the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. We recently vacationed there which is part of the reason for my large waymarking backlog and why I'm not taking time to wade through the forums.