Example for Grade 8: Narrative – Geocaching - ID: 5230

I’ve loaded the coordinates to my GPS, I’ve traveled far to get here, and I’ve finally arrived. I stand in a clear-skyed, clean-aired park with trickling streams, and the only signs of other people here are the small murmurs of distant voices. If they were to find the cache, they would be muggles. I can tell they’re not after the cache because, if they were, they probably would not be sitting on a bench, instead they would be walking about like me, following clues to find the cache. I ignore the others and think of the puzzle at hand.
Forcing my thoughts back into gear, I search my surroundings for the “ghosts’ house” described as a clue to locate the cache. Ghosts’ house? What that was to mean was unthinkable. I squint through the leafy trees and cross a bridge over the tiny stream, until I’m in an equally miniature clearing that bears only a bench. I sit down and scan the greenery. While I had come for the enjoyment of the scenery, I knew fromt the start that I would be unable to peaceably enjoy it until I’d found the “treasure”. I squint and see a hint of concrete among the bushes. I cross the same small bridge again and find myself on the opposite bank, looking down it for the first clue.
That’s when I see it. I spot a small shrine unevenly standing on the soft stream bank, and I know it’s the ghosts’ house mentioned in the clue. I excitedly jog to its side and peer into its hollow chamber to see nothing besides an accumulation of top soil. I sigh. Could it have been the wrong shrine? I keep looking and see another beside a trail. It’s larger– a walk-in shrine. I hurriedly cross the bridge again and cut across a different clearing that accesses the trail by which the hollow, lifeless shrine stood. I entered it and saw a statue holding a slab of concrete which was where you were to place something, I suppose. Beside it were the remains of some other feature that once stood with it, but had been reduced only to jagged blocks of cement. I scanned the stone figure for clues, remembering the one after “the ghosts’ house”. It was something related to a cavern of remnants, which must have referenced the pile of brick I’d somehow disregarded.
Knowing this had to be the resting place of the cache, I began rooting through the bricks, excitement causing my stomach to turn. At the bottom of the pile was a piece of paper that said “Match the top mark with the roots of an unliving tree,” which puzzled me greatly. I took the paper and covered it back up, then studied the top character engraved on one of the shrine’s walls. It was very easy to remember, as it was a fairly simple character.
I looked around, searching for what could represent an unliving tree. Unliving tree. Unliving tree. The words perplexed me. I thought I should begin searching for the unliving tree in outside the garden, then realized it could easily mean a dead tree. I left the shrine and began wandering the garden. At the first sign of a drooping, lifeless tree, I ran over and looked for a mark similar to the one I’d kept a photo of in my mind. There was nothing, so I chose to search outside the garden, as they obviously meant unliving, as in it was never alive. Not as in dead. When I saw a fake tree outside the garden’s gift shop that had the same symbol on the top as what was in the shrine, I knew I’d reached my destination. But the roots? That certainly meant I was to look beneath the tree.
So, feeling awkward and guilty for messing with what wasn’t my own, I lifted hte fake tree out of its pot just to see a bunch of messed up dirt around its fake roots. (I knew it was fake because of the fact that it wasn’t even made of wood- a lazy fault.) So, I placed the tree carefully in the pot again, smiled at the gift shop manager who’d given me a strange look, and picked up the entire pot. Sure enough, behind it was a small box. I almost dropped the tree. Instead, I carefully put it back and snatched up the box, took out a pocket compass and left a few gold coins, signed the logbook, snapped a photo of myself, and left it be, hoping no one had seen my discovery.