1178. The Yin and Yang of Letterboxing in Maine - stroll
Phippsburg, ME

Oh, how well we still remember those early days of letterboxing in North America when folks we really admired back then like Jay Drew, Carolyn Stearns and mapsurfer would gather in small groups (several times even in our own living room!;-) just to talk about what course letterboxing should take here on this side of the Atlantic to keep it distinct from what seemed to be happening to British letterboxing. From its fabled beginnings of adventure hunts out on the moors, apparently even at that time British letterboxing in some places had already devolved into mostly just collecting bunches of stamps in pubs and such! Maybe some stamp-focussed folks over there had decided that buying booklets of clues supposedly in support of some pub or other institution was the way for them to go , but over here on this side of the pond our North American letterboxing founders thought that using the internet to make clues freely available to "anyone who wanted to get a clue and go on an adventure" was going to be our way to go! Time and again we heard how letterboxing in this country was supposed to be about getting folks “out into the wilds” on their own free time for some exercise in nice public preserves, and that finding a stamp to mark a completed hunt was just the "icing on the cake"!

Fortunately the ground plans set up by our North American hobby’s founders served to get letterboxing in this country off to a wonderful start, and one of the greatest early flowerings of letterboxing in all its fullness was right up there in Maine with the incomparable legerdemaine! The elegant clues he arranged to match up with gorgeous mountain hikes around Arcadia remain to this day some of the finest examples we can remember of letterboxing adventures anywhere, and the fact that the stamps he carved were also exquisite was decidedly only a secondary factor for us in the overall breathtaking individual letterboxing experiences he created.

Well, fast forward to only a couple of years since those first glorious Y2K days and it seemed like letterboxing in Maine had quickly gone from the sublime to the ridiculous! We used to love taking a trip up to Maine even for just even a couple of those wonderful early boxes which apparently no longer exist, but when we went to one of the gatherings in southern Maine just a few years later where people were literally sitting on blankets in an open field throwing stamps to each other, we were so saddened by that unfortunate turn of events that it was quite a long time before we even wanted to go back up there at all! It seemed like most everyone up there had suddenly become part of a self-proclaimed “inky-fingers” crowd only interested in stamps! Before he bowed out, even the great legerdemaine planted a few drive-bys seemingly as if to try to lure in the new stamp-oriented group, but, for us at least, the magic was gone and it seemed that most of the other earlier letterboxers had left the hobby by then as well.

Now fast forward another whole bunch of years and it looks like in the meantime at least a few people in Maine have been trying to stage a bit of a comeback for letterboxing up there! Yes, it does seem that what we sometimes refer to as “personal drive-bys” still seem to predominate in certain parts of Maine (where some folks want you to find their favorite pancake stop, coffee shop, or whatever, and - no kidding! - even without a clue, Pete and I have both more than once stopped just for fun to check random guardrails in Maine and found letterboxs therein!;-) But we have also seen many signs that more people are getting back to the strolls, the walks and even the hikes of letterboxing on so many of Maine's pretty preserves, which, along with the drive-bys makes for quite a delightful yin/yang blend of boxing !

So, we're glad to say that we've finally come around to accepting that there do now seem to be two main coexisting types of planters and finders in Maine and elsewhere: those who prefer to utilize the hobby as it was originally intended to experience natural beauty by walks in lovely places, and those whose main focus is on stamps, inky fingers and "personal drive-bys". There may also be some folks in Maine who feel that others who visit their state should plant more stamps for them in return, but that would be contrary to what our mentors had told us years ago about planting - that we should each concentrate on planting in our own home areas to encourage others to come visit the special local spots that we know about and wish to share, or plant in places we might visit where there just aren’t many letterboxes to be found - not “poaching” on other people’s areas, treating stamps as trading commodities or “bringing coals to Newcastle”!;-) However, I did decide to plant a couple more stamps up in Maine on my last trip anyway, since I just happened to notice that two yin and yang stamps that moonstone had wanted me to get out of RI for her a while back were still hanging around in my glove compartment and all I needed to do was come up with some sort of story to tie them in to yin and yang, so - sorry, folks, but this is all I could come up with - good wishes for the harmonious coexistence of different letterboxing types!;-)

Anyway, at the risk or being called “poachers” by “old-timers” (although most new boxers don’t seem to care and actually seem to prefer boxes placed as close together as possible!;-), Pete and I had so enjoyed visiting the Phippsburg area in times past that when I had the chance to skip out again to Cox’s Head and read in a clue that Daytrippers had not had time to check out another short trail near where they had recently planted, I thought that might be a good place for me to plant in order to give them an excuse to get back out there! Once you figure out how to get to that cool starting point, just take the other trail they mention, the orange-blazed one with the old apple trees on it. Curve right and left around a chunk of ledge rock and a spruce with a small wooden board nailed on it. On the left side of that tree under needles and a small flat stone is where I seem to remember leaving the darker, inkier of the two yin and yang signs - I really can’t remember which one that was!

Now continue looping up the orange trail to where it levels out by a very large old multi-tree. Standing by the orange blaze on its outstretched arm, taking six steps northerly toward a medium spruce should get you to where the other half of the yin and yang letterboxing equation hides tucked under a sharp-faced quartzy chunk of rock between a couple of others. Please make sure that you are careful to choose the right one and put it back just as carefully, too. Then just continue around the short loop back to the tipsy parking lot! Cheers and hope you all find a happy yin and yang letterboxing coexistence, too!
Copyright (c) Wanda and Pete. All Rights Reserved.

BEFORE YOU SET OUT, PLEASE READ THE WAIVER OF RESPONSIBILITY AND DISCLAIMER.