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Outside Magazine's 2002 Family Travel Guide

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Get A Clue (Cont.)

We tried the right-hand trail, at 80 degrees. After 80 paces we found ten thousand birches, many of them entwined, many on rocks, none of them over boxes. A certain amount of head scratching, rock turning, and cursing under the breath are to be expected, but the sun was sinking and the air cooling appreciably. We read the instructions for the seventieth time and realized that we were at a junction all right, but it was not Maine Junction. The trail, and the junction, had been moved. Forget about getting all three boxes; we'd be lucky to find one.

Rubber-Stamping It

While you won't need much equipment beyond a compass, a good map, a basic notebook, and a signature rubber stamp, you'll find a variety of letterboxing and stamp-making supplies at www.letterboxingcentral.com.

It was only the challenge that kept us going. With Zoe and her coat sandwiched between Barbara and me, we strode around Deer Leap Mountain, loudly singing English nonsense songs from my father's days in the Boy Scouts. We stopped to look at distant ponds, odd insects, vast fungi, and strange, asbestoslike fibers that were growing on a dead branch. This is the real appeal of letterboxing: It gets people outdoors who otherwise would be playing Final Fantasy or watching the Cartoon Network. At last we reached Maine Junction. I took bearings: The birches were either ten to 20 paces down the Long Trail or 80 to 90 down the Appalachian. Barbara and the girls rooted around the LT; I followed the AT out of sight. I'd just found a pair of giant birches, their roots entwined over a hollow big enough to hold an entire post office, when I heard faint voices calling jubilantly through the trees. Barbara had found the box.

A certain amount of head scratching, and cursing under the breath are to be expected.

It was between a pair of slim birches, among the crisp fallen leaves, hidden under a single stone—just where it was supposed to be, in fact. Inside the small plastic lunchbox, protected by a plastic bag, was a notebook containing twenty or so stamp imprints, some crude, one an astonishingly beautiful, intricate cockerel; a small ink pad; and the Maine Junction stamp—an L pointing west and an A pointing east. Ecstatic, we stamped in—a zebra, a jug, a frame of film, a skateboard—and signed our names. The girls stamped their own notebooks with the Maine Junction stamp.

Suddenly we weren't tired any more. After all, a puzzle solved at home is a puzzle solved; a puzzle collectively solved in darkening woods is a family triumph. We sang almost all the way back to the car.

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