I've got a whole new time-wasting hobby going on. Letterboxing. Heard about it in the Susanville daily photo blog. Started in England, been around about 150 years. Kind of like a treasure hunt. You plant a small box with a little journal and a rubber stamp in some publicly accessible but hidden place. You publish clues and then other letterboxers find the box. You have your own stamp and journal. When you find a box, you stamp their design in your journal and you make an entry in their journal and use your own stamp regarding your find. Then you rehide the box for the next person.
Similar to GeoCaching except no GPS coordinates and you do not swap things in the box. So far I have found 5 (they were all there) Besides the other two I mentioned earlier, I found one in Hamlin Park, one at the Kenmore library and one in a little neighborhood park on the other side of Lake Ballinger.
I'm plotting out my own letterboxes that I'm going to place. I've got some supplies. It's not so easy to find a place but I've got an idea now. A theme even! When I plant the first box, I will announce the theme. I can see that scouting a spot for a letterbox could be construed as terrorist activity. What's the difference between hiding a letterbox and a bomb? I was scouting around some roadside brush right behind the Lake Forest Park City Hall this noon and you should have seen the extremely concerned suspicious looks I was getting from staff members working out back.
Part of the letterbox activity revolves around the custom stamps that you make yourself and use. Um, I don't have any custom stamps and am completely lousy in that kind of design and fine motor activity. So I'm using my neighbor's castoff stamps she no longer wants. Probably completely uncool and tacky.
I think the clues and directions will also challenge me. Often the placer ties the box to some local feature or story.
Another form, virtual letterboxing DOES look completely useless and a waste of time. Really just puzzle solving and trivia. Hey, I have 3 blogs plus I work online, do I need any more of THAT? Nope, this way gets you outside and exploring. Works great with my Lake Forest Park daily picture blog.
Picture shows my letterboxing kit complete with old cloth bag already smeared with mud. Authenticity, yes! Also a great activity to do with Shadow. Dennis wants to do more outdoor activities, this seems just the ticket. He guffaws at the idea but did buy me a little tiny compass when he was at REI. Susanna also wants to give it a shot when we go down to Eugene.
4 comments:
I'm a little confused but this surely sounds like fun!
Where do you publish your clues?
The clues are at http://www.atlasquest.com or http://http://www.letterboxing.org/
The one part that I don't have together is that you are supposed to make your own rubberstamp to put in the box. But I am tremendously un-artsy so I'm using some commercial castoffs from my neighbor.
It all sounds like some new form of creative littering to me.
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