OUT THERE: Letterboxing offers a new way to see the outdoors

Too often we hustle through life, so distracted by destination or deadline that we miss the countless delights and surprises that comprise a place.

A good cure for this modern condition? Stamp collecting.  

But not the type of stamp collecting that first comes to mind.

This brand of stamp collecting is a century-old tradition combining hiking, treasure hunting, art, puzzles and, yes, stamps. In this case, hand-made, one-of-a-kind rubber stamps. It is a pursuit known as letterboxing.

Letterboxing works like this: Someone hides a small, waterproof box containing a small notebook and a rubber stamp in a public place — under a park bench, in a crevice in a rock pile, or the hollow of a tree — it could be anywhere. Usually the stamp is hand-made and bears an image related to the place. Then, the hider posts clues on letterboxing websites on how to find the box. Others seek it out, toting along their own notebooks and custom stamps. When they find the letterbox, they stamp their symbol in the letter box’s book, and stamp the letterbox’s in theirs.

“It sounds simple but you would be amazed how some paper and stamps can connect you to all sorts of people, and take you to places you might never go without them,” Ann Grant, a retired Colorado Springs music teacher and avid letterboxer, said last week as she walked along a trail in Red Rock Canyon Open Space.

Case in point, Grant and her Chihuahua mix, Ssili, were out on a gorgeous fall day because she had to repair a letterbox she hid in the park in 2006. Heavy rain last summer damaged the notebook. She wound her way up the Contemplative Trail, forcing a reporter who tagged along to follow a series of clues:

Pass some old graffiti on the rock, go through a narrow stone pass, at the top of a steep climb, find a bench looking out at a gorgeous view. Turn around and find a walrus-shaped rock. In a cleft by the second fin is the letterbox.

The string of clues forced attention to the here and now, since a letterboxer never really knows where he is going until he first figures out where he is.

“All together I’ve planted three,” she said. “And found several more. I try to put them in a beautiful place, a place you want to go — and a place where there isn’t already a letterbox.”

That used to be easy, but letter boxes have proliferated. Garden of the Gods has them, the summit of Pikes Peak has them. Even Evergreen Cemetery has them.

Letterboxing traces its roots to the remote moors of Dartmoor, England — a wild, windswept landscape that starred in the Sherlock Holmes story “The Hound of the Baskervillles.” In 1854 a local guide named James Perrott hid his calling card in a jar in a remote rocky nook at a place called Cranmere Pool. He then challenged friends to find his cache and leave a card to prove they’d been there.

The jar of calling cards evolved into a log book where visitors could sign their names. Slowly hikers added letterboxes to other popular destinations. By 1976, 15 known boxes waited in the Dartmoor hills, according to a history of the area, including some with a stamp visitors could press in their journals.

The tradition crossed the Atlantic, according to modern letterboxing lore, in 1998 when Smithsonian Magazine published an article on the letterboxes of Dartmoor.

From there letterboxing spread. There are now 36,497 letterboxes in North America, according to the pursuit’s leading Website, letterboxing.org.

The Pikes Peak region started with a scattering of letterboxes in 2003, Grant said. Now there are at least 83.
Americans do things differently, though. With few heaths around, local letterbox caches range from remote mountaintops to busy parking lots. The clues leading to them can be straightforward directions or vexing riddles.

One local letterboxer who goes by the name Jelly Bean is notorious for devising challenging letterboxes. One of them, called the Big Brain Box, can be found only by solving a series of audio clues on a CD hidden in another letter box.

Another difference: While the English stamps are generally store-bought, here most are made by hand.
“That’s what I love,” said Erin Terry, a local letterboxer responsible for hiding a dozen boxes around town. “The skill and creativity of the people who carve these stamps is amazing. I consider it an art form.”

She has two log books full of the unique and gorgeous stamps she has collected over the years.

She got into letterboxing in 2005 as a mother with two young kids who had just moved to town.
“It took me to places I would never know about,” she said. Palmer Park, Pulpit Rock and even Grant’s hidden box in Red Rock.

“It is a great way to get to know the area,” she said.

And hunting for boxes gives her two kids, ages eight and four, a fun motivation to get out for some exercise.

The kids learn to follow directions and look for clues. They get to make art and collect it. And they get a true souvenir of a place, instead of just a mass-produced plastic trinket. And it costs next to nothing.

Letterboxing tends to encourage the best human qualities — curiosity, creativity, and the urge to share — while minimizing the commercialism, selfishness and impatience that sometimes seem to dominate life.

In Red Rock Canyon, after the reporter had found the walrus fin where the letterbox was hidden, Grant knelt down to replace the damaged notebook. Next to a stamp of a full moon, she placed a fresh book with a note on the first page that read “Dear Friends, Congratulations, you have found the Contemplative Trail Letter Box. Have a happy day.”

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Contact the writer:
636-0223

TRY A LETTERBOX

This letterbox just appeared on Letterboxing.org. It is the newest box in Colorado Springs. See if you can find it.

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