Carved onto Speedball pink stamp block and stamped onto white cardstock with Ranger Distress Archival Inks.

I wanna do a series of letterboxing trading cards with these and then I’m unsure if they’ll go into a traditional letterbox or if I’ll hang onto them to be able to make more zodiac cards on request. I do want to carve all the Celestial Brush Gods from their splash page artwork eventually too.

Hello! I'm MapleTreeway. You may recognize me as the author behind the letterboxing mini zine, but I hope you will also come to recognize me as a new moderator for the sub! I'm looking to introduce some changes for the community, but I'll cover the ones that have gone through already.

New Changes

First up, User Flairs! I've gone ahead and added some static user flairs based on existing letterboxer memes and stereotypes, but there's also three editable ones for trail names with choices between the AQ, LBNA, and Dartmoor 100 Club icons. I'm very happy to add others or edit the colors upon request.

Sidebar Link Buttons! These navigate directly to the search features on AtlasQuest and Letterboxing.org so new and seasoned letterboxers can quickly look for letterboxes. And on that note:

Automod Responses! I'll be adding more as the need arises, but some of the more common posts that have landed on this sub lately have been unintentional letterbox discoveries and accounts getting caught in the IP ban wave meant to swat away bots. There are currently a handful of pre-packaged responses to help explain what's going on or request more information from users to help get field reports back to a letterbox's owner.

My Moderation Philosophy

I'll try to keep this part brief. My intentions for this subreddit are for it to remain by letterboxers, for letterboxers. Any changes made will be in keeping with that line of thinking. This subreddit is one of the more public on-ramps for new users, and my overall goal is to allow this group to be a midway point between the discussions that take place on the AtlasQuest forums and the photos and inspiration sharing that occur over on the Facebook groups without replacing either one. With that in mind, I'm also taking cues from other groups I've been part of so that knowledge can flow freely rather than be locked behind a walled garden.

Planned Changes and Requests for Community Input

First up on this agenda is a Rules Refresh. I'm not expecting to add a huge list as much as I am a handful of guidelines. This will include a much overdue No AI rule, as this is a very creatively-focused hobby, and some form of policy

I am also looking to add more Post Flairs. Currently there are just the announcements and "letterbox found by accident" flairs, but I'd like to add more and add another sidebar widget to let folks sort by post flairs as tags. This is where I'd like community feedback the most. Some of the ideas I've had include but are not limited to:

• Trail Photos -- not including where a letterbox was found
• Tracker Signup Alert (with links back to the AQ tracker for LTC swaps, postals rings, and other miscellaneous trackers users might want to attract attention to)
• Tales From The Trail -- for sharing recent experiences and finds
• Inspiration / Ideas
• Tutorial / Guide
• Show-And-Tell -- strictly for work a user created themselves. I'll revisit this issue if it becomes difficult to moderate. I'm wanting to discourage sharing the contents of other letterboxes to keep with the culture of other letterboxing communities, but especially their exact locations
• Work-In-Progress / WIP -- not fully sold on the name, but something similar for users to showcase anything they're working on and would want feedback on

Since letterboxing is pretty multidisciplinary, I'm also planning to reach out to the mod teams for a handful of related subreddits and confirm they're alright with me linking to their communities. The result of this will probably turn into another sidebar widget, but I may format it into an automod response that can be manually or automatically triggered to summon resources for new users.

Finally, let me know if we'd like some changes to the Look and Feel of the sub! This would include an icon, a banner image, and custom colors for the subreddit.

If there's anything else you all think would be good to add, please drop it in the comments! Otherwise, that's all I have for now!

Happy trails,

~MapleTreeway

Dartmoor letterboxers Si of Relief and Rat Boy headed to the New Forest to take in the last of its boxes and share their knowledge on its scene.New Forest Letterboxing 🇬🇧

To the owner/creator of the series on the purple trail in Gillette castle state park Hadlyme CT- your box WAS found by the DEEP crew who has been working in the area. They were doing large scale trail maintenance and removing/relocating a lot of the rocks that had fallen from the turn around so that it could be safely hiked through again. The box was returned safely to its hiding spot, and brought a smile to everyone’s faces when it was (accidentally) discovered.

Bit of an atypical post for this sub, but I saw there's been a slight uptick in posts here recently and thought some folks might get some use out of the zine I just published! You can find the printable files for Letterboxing -- Or How to Find Art in the Woods hosted on itch.io. I'm working on some other zines that cover less well-known forms of letterboxing and stamp ink etiquette, but let me know if there's anything else you'd find helpful or interesting to have or read about in a mini zine. I'd like to think my love of the hobby and community shines through in this project, and I very much hope some folks here find it useful too!

Hey all, I'm brand-new to the idea of letterboxing (came across it while reading my favourite magazine this morning!) and have just signed up for letterboxing.org when I hit a major snag- despite never having heard of it before, and only signing up today, my account has been disabled with a very snarky message (screenshot attached).

I wouldn't mind the message and would probably see the funny side in any other circumstance, but I didn't even get chance to log in! My username is Melusine so I can't see any issues there, but I did use Google password manager to generate a secure password.

Does anyone have any input? I'm a bit disappointed that this is my first foray into a new hobby and it's been slapped down without so much as a "Please message here for help".

I want get back into letterboxing, dig up my old carving kit and rubbers. What site is everyone using these days?

I was at a rest stop in Hammond, Indiana at the Indiana Welcome Center stretching my legs and came upon a small box. My curious self investigated, cautiously, and discovered the letterbox!! I'm new to the adventure so I was unable to contribute, but I'm interested in finding the owner/page to say I found it. Any help is appreciated! Is this still an active hobby, or did I find a box placed from 10 years ago?

Just getting back into letterboxing after about 10 years away. Back in the day I was a member of AtlasQuest and used that site to manage the boxes I'd found. So I jumped over there tonight to see what was going on. I was able to get to the site, briefly, and was able to log in. But then I started getting site timeout errors repeatedly. Has this been an ongoing issue or is it temporary? Any updates on this would be great.

TIA

A blueberry in a maple bucket. What do you see?

I live in Vermont. As soon as I learned about hitchhikers I knew this was the next stamp I needed to make. The makes me laugh.

Update: it’s a tick!

Discovered letterboxing today and made a stamp which I hope to plant.

While hiking in Laurel Lime Ridge Park in Seymour, CT I saw something white in a ditch off the side of the trail. It was this PVC tube that had been turned into a letterbox, but the lid was a couple of feet away and the contents were all soaking wet. I tucked everything back inside as well as I could and stuck it back under a rock overhang where I think it was supposed to be placed, but obviously I couldn't leave it out to dry since I wasn't coming back to the park any time soon and it would probably rain before anyone came across it.

I used to do letterboxing as a kid, but it's been a long time and I was wondering if anyone here knew what to do. Can I alert the creator of the box through the site? I tried to search for it but didn't have success (though it's late and I'm on my phone so I might have better success on pc lol)

Lost my stamp on the trail yesterday, so I had to just doodle my signature image in the last couple logs. I'm not too broken up about it, though. I drew and custom-ordered my original signature stamp before I learned how to carve. Since then I'd been meaning to hand-carve a new signature stamp anyway. This just gave me the nudge to do so!

Yesterday I finally figured out what this means, that it's referring to absolute compass direction. Previously I'd been thrown off because I thought, for example, that if I'm headed down a trail heading NW and I'm told to look 180 degrees, that means I turn around and look SE, rather than -- as I now understand -- looking due south as that is 180 on the compass.

This threw me off on a previous letterbox where the clue said to look 275 degrees but the box was at a 90 degree angle from where I was facing per the last instruction.

Compass app made all of that much easier yesterday.

and it honestly made my day.

i have wanted to geocache with my family for years, but have had a hard time getting dialed in for one reason or another… so imagine my delight when i reached into a tree and found some treasures while we were all hiking together. we all signed our names inside~i’ll have to keep an eye out for another one sometime.

Not to brag but today I went out and found all 7 letterboxes I was looking for. That's never happened before. Found 4 at the Iwo Jima memorial, 2 at Roosevelt Island, and 1 by Georgetown University (and had occasion to climb the Exorcist Steps!) Also found and replanted 4 fleas.

I used to letterbox all the time as a kid and I noticed that a lot of the letterboxes near me haven't been active in the past decade except for a few that have been marked as found in the past year or two. I live near a lot of trails and I love this hobby so I thought I would get back into it by making a new one and have my younger family members play-test it for me as a fun bonding thing. I'm not sure if things have changed since the last time I was involved in this so I wanted to get some feedback.

Are Rubbermaid containers still the best or has a better one been found at a reasonable price point? I was looking at the Ello meal prep containers which looked pretty sturdy.

Other than the basics (stamp/notebook/instructions) what are some good things to include? I remember some letterbox having their own ink pad which was convenient and a pencil/sharpener. Any suggestions would be appreciated!

Edit: Thank you, everyone, for your advice! I removed the ink pads since it freezes in the winter here and I individually bagged everything before putting it in the letterbox. I did end up using the Ello snap and nest containers and will check up on the to see how they fair over time, but initial at home testing seems very waterproof and sturdy so I have high hopes.

My family and I recently got into letterboxing and want to try carving our own stamp. I’m not sure what tools or materials people recommend for beginners.

Are there good starter kits, or specific tools we should get? Ideally something simple enough to do with kids.

Thanks!

what is the letterboxing scene like in NZ? I want to introduce my son to letterboxing and get back into the hobby. We moved to Christchurch a few months ago and I’m wondering how active we might be able to get.

i’ve been wanting to place some more letterboxes near me, and have carved some lovely stamps, but it would be sad for nothing to come of it

Hello!

I was an avid Letterboxer in my teens and 20s (am now 40. Much wow. Much creaky ol' bones) and have decided, during what I am calling my "funemployment" to get back into it.

I was looking through the website for nearby boxes, and thinking about where to place some new ones (I'm in Oregon and there don't seem to be a ton of active ones in the area anymore) and noticed a tab called "Travelers." What is this? I couldn't find a lot of info on what types of boxes those are, how to find them, or how to set them loose in the world. Anyone got the scoop? EIL5 please.

Happy to be back here. 😊

PS - If Jonathan from Ohio is here, please say hi :) We lost touch in our teens but we were online friends in the late 90s. He logged off AIM one day and never got back online. He's the reason I know about letterboxing and got into it at all. I miss him. 💜

These will be the last for a little bit as I'm out of rubber!

Carved a new hitchhiker!