Ron's Info-Closet Annex
The online extension of Ron's Info-Closet.
Book links are usually to my Powell's affiliate program; game links are usually to Funagain Games, and benefit the Games to the Rescue Project.
Share and Enjoy!
Ron Hale-Evans
rwhe@ludism.org
Topics:
Archives:
Blogroll:
Letterboxing: my first hitchhiker and first first-find
Now sit right back and you'll hear a tale, the tale of my recent letterboxing activities.
On 23 September (a Thursday night), I found my second virtual letterbox, Chippy. It didn't have quite the same feel of an actual walk as the Emerald City virtual letterbox did, but I did learn a lot about wildlife. Recommended for a rainy afternoon.
I'm keeping the "stamps" from virtual letterboxes in the pocket of the Moleskine I'm using for my logbook.
On Sunday, 26 September, Marty and I and Kisa Griffin made a quick stop on the way to Tacoma for the Glenn Hanson Park [sic] letterbox in Kent, Washington, the town where Marty and I live. Kisa and I figured out the landmarks and found the box without too much trouble. The stamp was cute, but the logbook and most of the rest of the box were severely waterlogged. I did all my stamping stuff, dried the box out as best I could, and replaced it. Interestingly, the last group to visit the box didn't stamp the log, but signed themselves "The Dog Pound", with trail names such as Snoopy, Big Dog, and Hoochie Poochie. Another dog synchronicity -- or do letterboxers just tend to be dog people?
The round trip from the starting place to the box and back to the car only took about half an hour. I asked Marty cheerfully when we returned, "You don't mind that we picked up a hitchhiker, do you?" I had found my first hitchhiker letterbox (what they call a "parasite" in Dartmoor letterboxing). It was called the Mini Bob's Wife Hitchhiker, and had made its way up to Kent from Gresham, Oregon, about 170 miles south. I would have liked to hide it in the next letterbox I found, as is customary, but there was just room in the logbook for me to stamp and sign it. I'll be mailing it back to Twinkletoes in Gresham shortly.
Personal letterboxing peeve: Big families with little kids who letterbox together and then give each of the kiddies their own page in the logbook to stamp. With a nice fat logbook it probably doesn't matter, but with a tiny logbook in a hitchhiker, it wastes a lot of space. Mini Bob's Wife might have made it up to Canada or somewhere out east if so many of the pages hadn't been wasted with this kind of thoughtlessness. Plus, the kiddies' stamps are usually store-bought, so there's less room for original stamp art.
Yesterday, 3 October, Karl Erickson and I found the letterbox "Great Moments in History: June 8, 1959", placed by Green Tortuga on 16 September 2004 in Cougar Mountain Regional Wildland Park. The letterbox had been there about three weeks, but we were the first finders. Woot! Too bad there wasn't a first-finder certificate!
As you can see if you follow the link, this is a box with a puzzle clue. I didn't find the puzzle difficult, but I had the right tool for the job. (No, I shan't tell you what that tool was.) However, if Green Tortuga is who I think he is, his letterboxes are reputed to be fiendishly difficult, so I guess it's no surprise it took so long to be found.
Karl picked me up around 10, but we didn't get to the park until 12 pm. Truly, we had a harder time finding the trail itself than finding the box once we were on the trail. The hike was lovely. This small field of flowers at the starting point was lovely in the noon sun:
The starting point: nothing but flowers
Not too far up the trail, we came across this gnarled, mutant, hollow tree, surrounded by huge mushrooms, where I would have hidden a letterbox if I had one to hide. But it wasn't our destination.
Where the letterbox should have been hidden
Eventually, I located the landmark and Karl found the letterbox when we got there. (I was poking around with my walking stick, wary of snakes. I might have found it if I had rooted around with my hands, but Karl was braver.) Karl snapped this photo of me:
A great moment in history: Ron, flushed with triumph
The stamp was really nice! You might say it was a commemorative stamp. Thanks, Green Tortuga! It really would have benefited from my using multiple colours instead of my standard black. I may start carrying around markers now.
On the way back to the car, I discovered that I had lost my compass. Since my camera had dropped out of my pocket when I sat down to stamp the letterbox, I figured my compass might have too. Light-footed Karl offered to zip back to the landmark to see if he could find it. He couldn't. So much for "take nothing but photos, leave nothing but footprints".
Hi, I'm Karl, and I don't have your compass.
The whole hike took about an hour, and when we returned, Karl and I made a slight detour to a scenic vista. The day was foggy and everything looked soft and perfect.
After we got back to my house, Karl and I hung out with Marty for a while, looking over a new game system I am reviewing called Trillõn and its rulebook. Karl eventually went home, and Marty and I went out in search of Sid Sackson's posthumously-published game BuyWord. No luck with that, but I did pick up another compass like the one I lost. This time I bought a lanyard for it.
Entered 14:18 [/games/letterboxing] permalink
Before I set out to find the REI Flagship letterbox (see below), I went in search of the Emerald City virtual letterbox by Mischief.
A virtual letterbox is one in which not only the clues but also the goal or treasure are all online. Emerald City has a nice treasure at the end of the trail, and the clue is clever and cute. An interesting experience -- you feel as though you are looking for a "real" letterbox. A quick, fun diversion. Recommended.
Entered 13:37 [/games/letterboxing] permalink
My first letterbox: REI Flagship
I've recently taken up a sport called letterboxing. It's a treasure hunt in which you decipher clues (in the U.S., usually from the Web), then hike to a hidden weatherproof box (the "letterbox") containing a unique, handmade rubber stamp. You stamp your logbook with the letterbox's stamp, and stamp the letterbox's logbook with your stamp.
For my personal stamp, I had wanted to do a graphic with a dog on it, because I love dogs and regard them as my totem animal. (Yes, I know that having a domesticated animal as a totem is... unorthodox. But you know, you don't pick your totem; it picks you.) My "letterboxing name" is related to dogs, and in fact, I am planning to take my dogs on letterbox hikes whenever it's permissible (many letterboxes are in city parks, where regulations about dogs vary).
Two nights ago, I spent a lot of time trying to draw a recognisable dog that somehow expressed my personality, but when I awoke yesterday morning, it had come to me that my stamp should show Anubis, so after buying the materials, last night I carved a rubber stamp bearing the image of Anubis (and my monogram -- see above).
Unfortunately, neither my skills nor my tools were up to the task of carving this computer graphic onto the stamp material. I'm told that the result is pretty good for a beginner, but eventually I decided to use a large version of my monogram (the sigil in the lower left of the stamp image). Too bad. I'll try my hand at another Anubis stamp (without my monogram) later.
Now, letterboxing is sort of like geocaching, but you don't need a GPS unit; the highest tech a letterboxer needs on the trail is a compass. But he does need a compass. Stewart Brand (who doesn't letterbox, as far as I know) recommends the Brunton Classic 9020G as a good, cheap, general-purpose model. It turned out that REI, an outdoor-goods co-op based in Seattle, carried this item, so I decided to go buy it and make my first letterbox the REI Flagship Letterbox. My friend Kisa and I went into the store, bought my compass and a few other things such as Nalgene bottle splash guards, gawked at the local sights (an indoor climbing pinnacle among them), and then followed the directions to the letterbox in the vicinity.
We got a little lost, because we didn't avail ourselves of the compass I had just bought, thinking we had spotted a short cut. We ended up poking around the whole area for the landmark where the letterbox was hidden. Kisa finally spotted the landmark, and I retrieved the letterbox and took it to his car, out of public view, where I did all the stamping and paging through the letterbox logbook. Then I hid the box again. Great fun, and I already have some ideas for my own letterboxes, which will be connected to my other gaming interests.
On the way home, I pulled out my logbook to admire the handsome new stamp, and Kisa said, "Look! A rainbow!" I glanced up and just then the CD player played a line from the Jethro Tull song, "Rover", from the album Heavy Horses: "The long road is a rainbow and the pot of gold lies there." Kisa shouted in surprise, and when I went home, I looked up the lyrics to "Rover". Here they are:
Rover
I chase your every footstep
and I follow every whim.
When you call the tune I'm ready
to strike up the battle hymn.
My lady of the meadows
My comber of the beach
You've thrown the stick for your dog's trick
but it's floating out of reach.
The long road is a rainbow and the pot of gold lies there.
So slip the chain and I'm off again
You'll find me everywhere. I'm a Rover.As the robin craves the summer
to hide his smock of red,
I need the pillow of your hair
in which to hide my head.
I'm simple in my sadness,
resourceful in remorse.
Then I'm down straining at the lead
holding on a windward course.Strip me from the bundle
of balloons at every fair:
colourful and carefree
Designed to make you stare.
But I'm lost and I'm losing
the thread that holds me down.
And I'm up hot and rising
in the lights of every town.
I find this a remarkably textured synchronicity: the dog connection, the treasure-hunting and wanderlust imagery, and of course the rainbow. An auspicious start?
Howdy, Anubis! See you on the trails.
Entered 00:09 [/games/letterboxing] permalink
Atom