The game — or sport — is played on a global level, but the rules are simple: take something, leave something and log it. The game is geocaching (pronounced “geocashing”), a global treasure hunt anyone can play.

About 325,000 caches have been hidden in 218 countries from Canada to Afghanistan. Operating from the Web site geocaching.com, more than 22,000 people comb the Earth, looking in every natural and manmade crevice. The caches can be anywhere but are mostly located in public places such as parks, forests, cemeteries and libraries, and most people likely pass one or two every day.

The caches can be anything and in any type of container: a magnetic key holder, a film canister, Tupperware, a five-gallon bucket, or any prop, like a plastic owl, that might fit into the surroundings.

Geocaches contain all the random small stuff that idly sits in that one drawer at home. Some common items include erasers, business cards, lucky coins, CDs, Happy Meal toys, super balls and photos. (Hope for a wealthy, or generous, hider.)

Ted Wands, 65, has been geocaching since November 2004. He found out about the game through his amateur radio buddies.

“A lot of people are putting junk in these hides,” says Wands, whose geocaching username is Ted II. Children like to find the trinkets and things, but “the old-timers take nothing, leave nothing and sign the logbook,” he says.

Geocaching.com’s parent company, Groundspeak, also sells travel bugs — dog tags whose ID numbers can be tracked from the Web site. Trading is encouraged, sending objects on trips around the world.

To play the game, geocachers depend on their GPS device, although some play without one. Each cache has an online profile, providing its coordinates to the second. The location can be detected within about a 15-foot radius, depending on satellite positions.

But to most, the game is not about the money or the treasure; it’s about the challenge of the search.

Kathleen Walker, a Kent State assistant professor of human development and family studies, has been geocaching for about five years and says the idea of actually finding a treasure, whether it’s junk or not, is the fun part. She also says geocaching coincides with traveling and provides much needed breaks in the monotony of long drives.

Some caches will require an overnight campout miles into the forest. Some may be only an easy hike off the sidewalk. The more birds (satellites) in an area, the closer the GPS unit can get the geocacher to the cache, Wands says.

“You have to look for something that doesn’t belong,” he says. Successful or not, geocachers write about their experiences in online logbooks.

The hiders — who are the seekers as well — can get creative with their caches, creating witty titles such as “Hoo let the dogs out?” Some caches are multi-stage, taking the geocacher “from waypoint to waypoint” (GPS talk for the place you want to get to). One cache Wands found needed to be decoded before it could be claimed. Each letter of the code was scattered around the park. “That one drove us a little dotty,” he says.

Muggles, the nonmagical characters in the Harry Potter series, are what geocachers call people who curiously watch as they walk in circles, seemingly searching for nothing at all. Players emphasize discreet seeking. For the unassuming muggle who happens to discover a cache, each contains an info sheet — printed from geocaching.com — explaining the object he or she has just found, its connection to geocaching.com and how to join the global game.

Geocaching.com has extensive guidelines for placing caches. The Web site requests hiding them near trails, human or otherwise, to prevent new trails from forming. Geocachers are responsible for regularly checking on the caches they’ve hidden and making note of their environmental impact.

Just by scanning the logs and profiles on the Web site, it is apparent most geocachers care about the environment and play the game because they appreciate the outdoors.

“I know we kind of trample on things, but frankly, I probably wouldn’t be out in Towners Woods if it wasn’t for geocaching,” says Walker after a geocache find in the Portage County park.

“The nice thing is that we get to explore some of these areas that we have kept for recreational use,” she says.

Fearing negative environmental impact, Parks Canada has temporarily banned geocaching until the agency creates a policy, the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. says. Ohio metropolitan parks have also banned geocaches, except virtual ones.

Virtual cache hunts use objects such as an odd tree or a monument as the cache, where people neither take anything nor leave anything.

Mark Szeremet, Summit County Metro Parks planner, says the staff has found caches at the parks and removed them. Although he hasn’t seen any damages noticeably related to geocaching, he says the parks have conducted natural resource inventories showing the parks’ natural environments are already fragile.

“At the moment,” Szeremet says, “geocaching is prohibited, but the park would be willing to consider a cache if the hiders were to ask for permission.”

Geocaching.com’s “Cache In, Trash Out” program promotes a “leave it better than you found it” policy. Cache hunters are encouraged to take a trash bag with them to help clean up cache-friendly places. Some caches even provide a trash bag stuffed inside a film canister.

Walker says she has considered geocaching’s impact on natural areas. “In general, geocachers are trying not to destroy the environment,” she says. “And I also think that the whole “Cache In, Trash Out” is a real effort of geocachers to clean up parks that might otherwise not get cleaned up.”

There are other games that use GPS devices. GPS enthusiast Wesley Woo-Duk participated in the Degree Confluence Project (DCP), at www.confluence.org. DCP says it is trying to collect photos of every whole-number latitude-longitude confluence — aside from ones in the oceans and at the poles. Snapping photos of these human-made invisible geometric lines can be dangerous, even life-ending. After much consideration, Woo-Duk decided against attempting to capture 38°N 126°E ­­— one of North Korea’s 18 confluences.

Another site, GPSgames.org, provides games that are safer than the DCP and more competitive than geocaching. Shutterspot is a game in which a person takes a picture of an area and others must find that exact spot. MinuteWar is a worldwide capture-the-flag game. Each player’s local map is divided into squares, one longitude minute by one latitude minute, and is theoretically imposed on every other player’s local map. First to capture a designated square wins … nothing but online GPS glory.

John Oberlin is senior magazine journalism major. This is his second story for The Burr.

Geocaching made possible, thanks to Bill Clinton

Before May 1, 2000, these games would’ve been much harder to play — 10 times harder, actually, according to a statement from then president Bill Clinton. His 1996 Presidential Decision Directive pushed to turn off Selective Availability, or SA, which purposely degrades civilian GPS signals for security reasons.

At midnight May 1, Clinton flipped the SA switch, and civilian GPS units became 10 times more accurate. Although Clinton’s aim was to encourage investments in GPS technologies and help emergency units respond to calls faster, his decision made the world-wide geocaching game possible.

Two days later, Oregonian Dave Ulmer celebrated the end of SA by placing the first geocache — a five-gallon bucket containing mapping software, videos, books, food,

money and a slingshot — and publishing its coordinates online. A combination of exploration, education, technology and community, his idea blossomed into multiple cache-listing and GPS-gaming Web sites and has taken cache hunters on beautiful hikes to new parks, memorials and fresh scenic views.

Because a mower mauled Ulmer’s original cache container, a plaque now marks its place off an Oregon road, on the exact coordinates of the cache that started it all.