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Margot Kelley (cambridge, ma)


N 42 ° 25.785 W 071 ° 05.008, 2002, C-print mounted on aluminum, 16 x 20 inches, Courtesy of the artist

The cache is on Metropolitan District Commission (MDC) land, near Malden, Massachusetts, and the day I dead-reckoned my way to it, the park was surprisingly mobbed. Apparently, the MDC holds an annual fishing competition, drawing hundreds and hundreds of young children who wear number-vests and vie to catch what they can from the stocked pond. Some of the kids were implacably serious about their pursuit, others were just playing at the water’s edge. I watched them for a while—but fishing is not really a very engrossing spectator sport, so I soon threaded my way up the hill, past an ambulance that was on-call and an ice cream truck doing brisk business, and reached the cache itself.

The little trove was replete with incenses, herbal concoctions, sweet-smelling candles—fitting for something named a “New Age Cache.” And I smiled to think of the drove I had unnoticeably joined, folks using GPS satellites and the world wide web, rather than bent paper clip fishhooks and pieces of hot dog, to participate in this new age’s version of fishing a collaboratively stocked pond.

Copyright © 2002, Photographic Resource Center, Inc.