Lifenut

How to Letterbox

In celebration of finding our 200th letterbox, I wanted to share what this hobby has done for our family, how it works, and why others should consider joining in.

People often hear “letterboxing” and believe it has something to do with mailing letters or having a pen pal.

It’s not. We describe it as a world-wide treasure hunting game, with thousands of boxes hidden in an extraordinary array of places. Some are found inside libraries. Others, at the end of day-long hikes. Letterboxes can be hidden anywhere a person can go. There are urban boxes in the middle of major cities, some as tiny as a mini magnetized mint tin. They are in parks and playgrounds, inside coffee shops, near historical markers, along nature trails, at beaches. There are boxes in major museums and zoos. Some are in random parking lots. Here, in Colorado, many are in incredibly scenic places.

Chances are, you’ve walked by numerous letterboxes without knowing. After we started, we realized how many times we had been close to boxes, having no idea they existed. That’s part of the fun. They are so small and so well camoflaged they are overlooked.

How is it different from geocaching?

Geocaching and letterboxing share a few similarities. Both are about hiding tiny boxes in fun places. Both get families out of the house and into nature. Both require stealth, watchfulness, and skill. You never, ever make a production out of finding a box because many boxes have been lost by people mistaking them for trash or simply being jerks. The only way both hobbies survive is because serious fans are careful to maintain hiding spots.

The differences are a matter of taste. We like letterboxing because we feel it’s more quaint, creative, and often relies on deciphering clues. It’s more like a treasure hunt. Letterboxing = The Goonies. Geocaching = Chewbacca entering coordinates into the Millennium Falcon. Both get where they need to be.

With geocaching, a GPS coordinate is used to find the box. It’s more high tech than letterboxing, although with letterboxing apps and clue websites, technology is still involved.

Geocache boxes often contain little trinkets people take and leave behind for the next finder. They also have logbooks.

Letterboxes are different. They contain rubber stamps, usually hand-carved. Some are incredibly ornate and beautiful. We carry a logbook and stamp pads in many colors. When you find a box, you take the stamp, ink it up, and stamp it in your logbook. All letterboxers have their own stamps, too. We have a family stamp. We ink it and stamp it in the box’s logbook, writing the date. Then, you re-hide the box exactly—or better than—you found it.

How Does a Goonie Start Letterboxing?

The first thing to do is go to Atlas Quest. This is the biggest and best letterboxing portal in the world. Do a simple search for boxes in your city or state to get an idea of how many exist, keeping in mind many are series and many are hidden until you find a certain number of boxes. Read the clues, rules, and play around. If you decide you want to look for letterboxes, there are a few things you need first.

Beginners/Just Checking it Out:

Any craft or hobby store will have the following items.

1. A rubber stamp. Before carving our own stamp, we used a Snoopy stamp from a hobby store. Choose something that reflects your family’s personality. Keep it small because some of the logbooks in boxes are tiny.

2. A logbook. Our first logbook was a spiral-bound journal from a hobby store, about 5X7. It should be small enough to fit in a bag.

3. Ink. There are stamp pads in every color! I bought two to get us started. Again, something small is great. Some letterboxers use markers, but I think that takes too long.

4. A dedicated bag to carry everything in. You don’t want to look obvious, with all your gear hanging out. We commandeered an old toddler backpack and it’s still our letterboxing bag. Little kids can carry it easily. It’s nicer to have a letterboxing bag because it keeps everything organized when you’re in a hurry to stamp and log, especially if you’re in a busy place.

5. A sense of stealth and respect. This sounds overly dramatic, but people work really, really hard creating boxes. If you don’t think you can be careful with them, respecting the time and work it goes in to planting boxes, just don’t do it. Please.

6. An Atlas Quest account (it’s free). This way, you can access tools and log in your finds for an online record of your accomplishments. You can set your privacy to public or private.

7. If you know someone who letterboxes, ask to join them on their next outing. You don’t need all the accoutrements. It’s a good way to see if it’s something your family would enjoy.

You’ve decided you love being a Goonie. How do you take it to the next level?

Again, craft or hobby stores are your friends.

1. Carve your own stamp. I had no idea you could do this. We bought a sheet of pink rubber stamp material at Michael’s with a set of carving tools. There are tutorials online at Atlas Quest. I carved several stamps, including our official stamp and I’m not crafty in the least. It was fun and the stamp is surprisingly meaningful. Ours includes our trailname (like your username) and a little cartoon guy Tommy designed. Keep it a manageable size.

2. Start planting your own boxes. It’s a good idea to withhold planting boxes until you’ve found a dozen or so. You are able to see how/where it’s done and learn tricks. There are many different types of boxes, from hard plastic to pouches to metal tins with magnets. You can buy a little logbook or make your own. Aidan made our logbooks out of cardstock and leftover scrapbooking paper, binding them with embroidery thread and a needle. Find a cool/beautiful/meaningful/unusual spot with good hiding spots, write your clues, leave the box, upload the information at Atlas Quest, and wait for the emails from finders to roll in.

3. Carry serious tools. Like bandaids, flashlight, gloves, a compass (smartphone will work). We learned this pretty quickly, actually.

4. Find/meet other letterboxers in your area. Atlas Quest has message boards where you can meet others. Many city or state groups have meetups and parties. Many collaborate and make series together. There are also mailed stamps, traveling stamps. We don’t participate in local letterboxer events, aside from getting together with a few ‘boxing friends.

5. Download apps with easy access to boxes, maps, other resources.

What has letterboxing done for our family?

~ We’ve been to places we would have never been, discovering new-to-us hiking trails, parks, playgrounds, cool scenic spots.

~ We’ve flexed our creative brains by making logbooks, carving stamps, writing clues.

~ We’ve embraced a sense of adventure and whimsy. Our kids can act like spies and ninjas, do reconnaissance, and find boxes on their own by problem solving.

~ We’ve collected and compiled logbooks full of some beautiful examples of artistry. It’s fun to flip through and remember some of the outings we had. It’s a unique family-owned journal.

~ Some of the kids are more into it than others, although they’ve all had fun doing it. You can’t expect nine kids to agree on everything.

I’m proud we’ve found 200 boxes as a family. In fact, Teddy, who will be four next month, was a key player in finding the 200th box, which was in downtown Louisville, Colorado. He was proud of himself, too, for being an active participate and helper. There aren’t many family hobbies where kids of all ages can be equal and active participants. We’ve found ours.

If you have any questions about letterboxing, I’m happy to answer! If you’re an experienced letterboxer and realize I left some critically important bit of information out (or, you want to share your thoughts/stories) please share!

Leaving the clown

This is the first post I’ve written in nearly 10 years of blogging that has a prerequisite before reading. To fully understand this post, we must travel back, back, back through the mists of time, riding a swirling vortex of flashing lights in our tricked-out phone booth. The post is called Startle and it’s 524 short words that will set place, time, context.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I was right. I hadn’t been to Montrose since my Grandma Mary’s funeral eight and a half years ago.

When my mom had her accident, my sister jetted out to help—but not without a few glitches along the way. Her flight into Grand Junction was cancelled. Montrose was the closest she could get if she didn’t want to wait two days. It was decided I’d drive my parents’ Buick to Montrose to pick her up from their tiny airport.

On the way, I passed The Tree and thought about pulling over in the small dirt lot to check it out. But my sister was in the sky probably well over the San Juan mountains and I wanted to be there when she landed. I was going to suggest we stop on the way back to Grand Junction to pay homage and see the decorations up close. After lunching and leaving Montrose, we drove through green Olathe and sadsack Delta, where the desert truly begins. I asked about seeing The Tree and she agreed. Around the biggest, baddest corner of death and doom, highway engineers thoughtfully built a turn lane to what is, essentially, just a single tree. I wonder how they explained the need to the big bosses over in Denver.

“Where does this turn lane go?” barked a man hovering over a map of the proposed Highway 50 expansion.

“To a tree.”

“A tree?! Explain the need!”

“It’s a special tree. People decorate it.”

“That’s the kind of thing Colorado likes! APPROVED!”

I used the most thoughtful turn lane in US Highway system history and parked in the small dirt lot.

My sister said we needed to decorate the tree with something. Of course we did. But what? We looked around the Buick. There was a small box of Kleenex, a shiny wrapper from the granola bar I stole from the console on the drive to Montrose, an air freshener clipped to the passenger sun visor, and a plastic clown head on a pick. Boom.

We stepped out. Both of us wore the wrong shoes for bounding our way through sharp scrubby weeds to get to a tree. I half-joked about rattlesnakes. We snapped photos of decorations, circling it. My sister, who had the clown head, got the honor of choosing a branch and planting it. She chose wisely.

Gazing at a vast horizon…

The clown faces southwest, looking out onto desert expanse. Not far beyond lurks Unaweep and Escalante Canyons and the Uncompaghre Plateau. Because he is a local clown head, he knows how to say these words.

The clown’s view

A lot of the decorations people put up near Christmas were gone, blown away or shattered. There were still a few hanging trinkets and more littering the ground. Someone had decorated The Tree for either Memorial Day or for Independence Day. A US flag banner spiraled around near the top and larger flag stood guard nearby.

We left the clown in decent company of a snowman and glittery balls, but not much else.

We said our goodbyes and drove to Grand Junction and our waiting parents. When we told them about stopping at The Tree, my sister said we left something there from their car. Guess.

My mom thought about it. “I bet you left that clown head.” We laughed. She said she didn’t know why she hung onto it for so long.

I don’t know when or if I’ll drive that highway again. If I do, I will make sure to stop and visit the clown. Long live his spot on the branch of an anomaly.

Shouting ‘Kentucky’ at Nobody

“Waterfall!” I bellowed at nobody in the back seat.

My little car cruised past the messy, splashing waterfall bounding over a cliff next to the interstate. For miles along I-70 through the Colorado mountains, waterfalls pounce down steep rocky hillsides. They are giddiest in the spring when runoff peaks, eagerly feeding rivers. Depending on which side of the Continental Divide you’re on, the water flows to either the Pacific Ocean or the Gulf of Mexico. So much rides on where a snowflake exits a cloud. Two feet to the west, it will thrill a drunk Vegas gambler as it leaps around a fountain. Two feet to the east, the snowflake might find itself reflecting fireflies in a bayou.

There was nobody to tell this sophomorically-profound nugget of wisdom. I was gazing straight at Mother Nature’s navel and had to contemplate the drastically different fates of water droplets, alone.

For most of the drive to my parents’ house, I was struck by the silent ease. I was my own DJ, playing a Pandora station I created long ago called Summer in Berlin after the Alphaville song. Nobody protested the 80s New Wave/New Romantic audial spree soundtrack. I could wail like a flouncy-shirted, sharp-cheekboned British man about melting with you in Rio. I enjoyed the silence.

Nobody was there to write down my shouted “KENTUCKY” after I read it on a license plate of a car I passed. There was no official State License Plate Listkeeper. I wondered if I could remember all of them and write them down later, for nobody.

When I stopped at the top of Vail Pass to visit the rest area, I didn’t have to shepherd anyone out, worried if the toilets flushed or didn’t. I’d deal either way, but was happy to send a contribution to a ridiculous desert golf course near the Arizona/Nevada border. Throughout the drive, I’d catch myself thinking of things to ask or tell children who weren’t there. Hungry? This is where bighorn sheep like to hang out. Potty? Who is asleep? 45 more minutes. Cool enough? Was that license plate for New York?

My identity is so thickly ensconced in being a mother that even when alone for hours, I continued doling out thoughts and anticipating situations that were impossible. The last time I drove from east to west on I-70, alone, I was a college student and still a child in many ways. I sang the same songs, but the British men were dads and husbands of models. Now, they are grandfathers and ex-husbands of ex-models. I didn’t need to stop at rest stops because I hadn’t carried and birthed a zillion children. If there was a bighorn sheep, the only way I’d notice was if I hit one.

Also, as a college student, I wasn’t thinking about my mom who was—at that very moment—in an operating room under general anesthesia having a body part screwed and wired back together because she fell. I was thinking about how to hide my smoking habit from her and did she have enough detergent for all the laundry I brought?

When I arrived in Grand Junction, I drove straight to the hospital. I went to her room on the eighth floor, but it was empty. I guessed she was still in surgery, so I rode the elevator back down to look for my dad and news. Where was he? My mom was hidden behind swinging doors protected by stern, badged people behind desks. He wasn’t in the waiting room. I began to wander. There were lots of people, but nobody I wanted to see. So much of the nobody that day, nobodies everywhere. I needed my somebodies—my kids and husband, my dad, my mom.

I found my dad after a few minutes. My mom was in recovery and would be for awhile. We went to the hospital’s cafe and I bought a sandwich. We sat and he pulled folded papers from the back pocket of his jeans. They were copies of x-rays. My mom’s right knee cap looked like a desperately hungry bird’s gaping beak. It was split completely with smaller bits floating around.

“Wow!” was all I could say. Just wow. That had to hurt, my God! I looked at the images until I came to something new.

Screws and wires seemingly hovering over two long leg bones. She had been put back together, the one who expressed how worried she was about me driving over, claiming it was unnecessary, they’d be fine.

Still my mother, always my mother, beautifully my mother, even though I hadn’t been in her backseat in ages.

Rummage

Compartments

Ancient History

My Closet

Follow Me?

How to Letterbox

Leaving the clown

Shouting ‘Kentucky’ at Nobody

Follow Me?

Rummage

Compartments

Ancient History

My Closet

Follow Me?

I Can’t Stay Away From:

How to Letterbox

Leaving the clown

Shouting ‘Kentucky’ at Nobody

Follow Me?

I Can’t Stay Away From: