..are strictly my own. I am really becoming disillusioned with the way our little game is beginning to change shape. As most people who know me are already aware, I am totally, 100% against all of the new publicity that is appearing about letterboxing. I am against the Girl Scout badge which promotes our hobby without really enforcing good habits. I am against the Scout leaders who "teach" the children the rules of letterboxing without having any experience themselves. I am against the Family Fun article and the local newspaper articles. I am against the Chevy ad promoting boxing.
I have just returned from a weekend boxing in Northcentral PA. The scenery is beautiful there and that alone provided a much needed mental health weekend, marred only by the frustration that I felt while searching for boxes in that area. For some reason, letterboxing seems to have caught on and I found four or five boxes by apparent new boxers. My frustration lies in the boxes themselves, in the finders of those boxes and in the placement of them. All of them had store bought stamps. Now, I am not particularly a stamp snob but I would like to see the stamp have SOMETHING to do with the box, the location, or the clues. One stamp in a neat little cemetery with clues called "The Deadman" promised an interesting find. My reward - a store bought stamp of a worm crawling out of an apple. Another one in Mt. Pisgah State Park and called the Toy Box, told the story of a young sister and brother playing in the woods prior to it becoming a park. The park was beautiful, the walk was not in one of the nicer sections of the park, and the stamp was......the exact same pine tree stamp that I have four or five other copies of. A stamp dealing with a toy box or something along those lines would have made it so worth the mediocre walk.
And then there are the finders. For some reason, so many of these boxes had a bunch of finders. But these finders don't have stamps. And they just list all of the names of the people who were along for the hunt. Scout troops perhaps? I think that in one of the boxes that I found at Hills Creek, there were about eight finders but only one finder actually stamped in. Where are they coming from? Did these people read an article in another publication and just decide to see what it was like? Did they hear about it from the kid whose scout troop mentioned it?
It appears that these finders who are not really letterboxers have also not learned the art of re-hiding either. The same box that had eight finders without stamps was also left laying in the open. The original hide wasn't a really good spot but the re-hide was horrendous. I could immediately see it from the trail, laying behind a downed tree. It wasn't against the tree, it was actually laying in back of a raised section of the tree so that it was noticeable from the front side. And covered with nothing on the back side.
Another box found in Hills Creek had a much better hiding spot. In fact, there is little chance that it will be noticed by muggles even though it is right along the trail. It is high above, I had to stand on my tippie toes to reach it. Hey, True Indigo, take your ladder along for that one. But the main drawback to this one, in addition to the store bought stamp which was only somewhat related to the clues, was that it was housed in a Wet Ones container which reeked of lemon when I took it down. I am not sure how attracted woodlands animals might be to lemon but this one may not last either.
OK, I think I am finished venting. And after this weekend, I stick to my guns about disliking all the new publicity about letterboxing. I really truly do not think that emphasizing the need to rehide well, to place thoughtful boxes in beautiful areas are enough. People get so excited with the idea of sticking a box in the woods, that they do just that - stick a box in the woods. And then lose interest. And then those boxes become trash in the woods. I have recently recruited my sister and my niece into letterboxing and they have accompanied me and seen examples of good boxes and bad boxes and because I was along for their first few trips to teach them, I am happy to hear them now evaluate boxes the same way when they have gone out on their own. And I have also pleaded with them to wait until they have a good number of finds to place their own boxes. So maybe those people who think that they have to shout about this game from the rooftops should also encourage their students to find before they place.
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