1056-58. Some "Thangs" You Might Need for Letterboxing? (3) - stroll
Exeter, RI
1. Glasses
2. Needle
3. Box

A mini-series of stamps in tiny black pouches from Spoiled Rotten of OH. A Penny for your thoughts about letterboxing as you go up and over the Hill?

For us, letterboxing has always been primarily about just getting out for walks on trails. Slipping into old age after an extensive backpacking and hiking career, taking up letterboxing, ( i.e. following clues, preferably along trails to reach "markers"/"boxes" to show that we had read the clues correctly and perhaps getting a stamp image to save in our memory book as a little memento of the walk), seemed like just the ticket for us to try to continue to remain active physically and mentally for as long as we could! All we really needed for letterboxing was a decent pair of shoes and some clues! What do you really need for letterboxing? A penny for your thoughts.

Of course, we would have to say that additional things we have needed for years now in order to do those little walks in the woods without tripping and to even have a chance at spotting some of the "markers" often mentioned in the clues are GLASSES! We wouldn’t get very far without them these days, maybe only about thirty steps or so from the trailhead in either direction before we’d have to start shouting "hey, we’d better do this thing right with "Four-Eyes"; otherwise, looking for some of these letterboxes is going to be like trying to find a NEEDLE in a Haystack"! (We could, of course, give more precise directions for finding these tiny black pouches, but for us, sometimes trying to figure out what the clue writer had in mind can be part of the fun!;-) Just imagine the "ah-ha moment" you might have if you were to find a couple of stones looking like "goggle eyes" behind a certain tree or one white rock midway up the back of a little grassy "haystack"! Different types of clues, from the straightforward to those that might require a bit of reading between the lines, have definitely been an essential part of our letterboxing experience for many years. What about you? What kind of clues do you like? A penny for your thoughts…

And now, on to our favorite part - the walk! Just a short walk this time, up and over the hill to check on "something fishy" that we had planted a long time ago. Old Hounder had told us years ago that it was missing, but it turns out that someone had just found it the day before we checked on it! (Hurray!) And they planted another box nearby that same day as well!! (Double Hurray!!) And we hope that more people will come to plant boxes on these vast and beautiful trails, where hiking is still allowed even in the coronavirus times of "social distancing", because that, too, is the essence of what letterboxing is about: not gathering people together to share stamps, but sharing special places that others can go to, each individually at their own particular times! We’ve never been the type to care much about stamps anyway, considering them just extra little token bits of "icing on the letterboxing cake", so to speak, a small reward for following the clues properly and "walking the walk", but - oh, all the wonderful trails and other places we’ve gotten to visit and explore through letterboxing! That’s what this hobby has really been about for us! What about you? A penny for your thoughts…

And finally, now on our way back down the hill, just after the steepest part (which is hardly steep at all, even for old-timers like us;-), we couldn’t help but notice a triply-split boulder by a triple-trunk tree immediately on the left side of the trail. On the left side of the largest split portion, tucked in the space just to the right of a much smaller split-off rock segment and well covered with duff is where we left the little back pouch that marks the BOX itself! (And, yes, please note that the "box" stamp and logbook are not even in a box, but just in a pouch, so so much for the BOX in letterboxing, not always being the most essential element!;-) Yes, there have been many times in our letterbox hunts where we have not found boxes or stamps, but have still had a good letterboxing experience, so apparently the hike and the hunt have always been the most important parts of the hobby to us! What about you? What do you really need for a fun letterboxing adventure? A penny for your thoughts….

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