It’s a hot, humid day in mid-September, and Brian Mathis, a junior in business management has just finished his work at the Inter-Residence Council office.

He flips out his cell phone and starts pushing keys. Moments later, he gets into his car and drives off.

He finds himself at the Mission Valley Shopping Center, gets out of the car and opens his cell phone again. He pushes keys, all the while looking up to see who’s watching him.

He begins the hunt.

Mathis is looking for something unusual. It’s small and hidden, and meant for him to find. He looks everywhere within 30 feet of where he once stood. He goes through bushes and looks around lampposts.

Finally, he finds what he is searching for as he picks up a dislodged bottom piece of a lamppost. It was difficult and time-consuming to find, and he finally sighs with relief.

Picking up the small metal box, he opens the top, places his name inside, then promptly replaces it for others to find.

Mathis is a geocacher — and he goes on journeys just like this one once every week, usually finding about five caches.

Geocaching is both a hobby and a sport where the participant — a “geocacher” — searches for a hidden container.

Geocachers find these little containers using coordinates and a GPS navigation system — sometimes via cell phone. Other geocachers all around the world hide these containers that can range in size from a film canister to a large piece of Tupperware.

Although Mathis is one of the many geocachers who find the caches, he said he has hidden one as well.

Mathis found out about geocaching from an episode of CSI and began the hobby in December during Christmas break.

“I went on Google and searched ‘GPS games,’ and geocaching popped up,” Mathis said. “From there I started geocaching.”

Laura Stephens, a junior in mathematics education, is also a geocacher and works with Mathis in the IRC office.

She is one of a group of regulars that goes geocaching with Mathis. She said she has been geocaching since late July.

Mathis said he enjoys geocaching because it takes him to locations all around Raleigh — and, when he vacations, the country. He also gets the chance to learn more about the places he visits. Mathis said he has gone geocaching on N.C. State’s campus and as far away as Washington D.C.

“I would have found one in China, but that really didn’t work out,” Mathis said.

To find a geocache, participants first visit a Web site called www.geocaching.com, and identify areas they want to search. Next, they write down coordinates and input them into a GPS unit. The GPS unit leads them to the general area — usually around 20 to 30 feet from the point for which they are searching — and the search begins.

“It really is a high-tech treasure hunt,” Mathis said.

Mathis, who also serves as Inter-Residence Council president, said he plans to involve the IRC in geocaching in some way this year.

Geocaches can be anywhere: in a tree, under a bench or even attached to an object magnetically. And the caches can contain anything.

In every cache there is some kind of log.

“It’s either a slip of paper, or, if it’s big enough, a little notepad or something,” Mathis said.

He logs his geocaching name — a username created on the site — and the date and replaces the pad, ready to go hunting for the next cache.

Participants can also find other caches which can contain small trinket-like items.

The rule is that if something is taken, something must be put in the geocache in return.

“You can put small things like little sports balls or bouncy balls or even dice,” Mathis said.

However, the items found in a geocache aren’t limited to trinkets only. When Mathis found the cache “Crybaby Lane” in a field located at the end of a gravel path leading off of Western Boulevard where an orphanage once burned to the ground, he also found a bit of history.

Phillip Brock, a freshman in environmental engineering, has been geocaching for almost a year and has also found the “Crybaby Lane” geocache.

“We heard the stories about how Crybaby Lane was haunted,” Brock said. “You hear [children] crying at night.”

Brock and a friend visited the area and scoped out where the geocache could be.

“We tripped over the cornerstone,” Brock said, “and the geocache was supposed to be near the cornerstone.”

They searched around the stone and eventually found an ammunition box filled with a logbook and a stack of notecards recounting the event to them.

The ammunition box at Crybaby Lane is one of 474,886 geocaches in the world — so for Mathis, Stephens and Brock, there’s always a treasure to find.

“With geocaching, you never know what places you will discover or the people you’ll meet; it’s always a new adventure,” Mathis said.