Life on the Road

Yesterday, my husband and I went out letterboxing. This is a bit like a scavenger hunt in the woods, or a low-tech version of geocaching. You get clues to the location of the box and you try to find it. The box contains a log book and a rubber stamp, often hand-carved but not always. You bring your own log book, your own stamp, and an ink pad. Once there, you exchange stamp impressions with your own stamp and the one included in the box. Rehide it where you found it, and go on your merry way.

Unfortunately for me, today’s hunt was more like getting lost in the woods. In fact, it was exactly like getting lost in the woods, complete with me uttering this sentence: “Maybe next time when we go hiking, and you pack a day pack with some water in it, you could actually bring that water with you….” (As you can tell, I clearly haven’t gotten rid of all of my anger issues yet.)

In any case, the instructions were something like this: “Go to the park, but I won’t tell you which entrance to use. Find the stone memorial.” For the record, we’re in Massachusetts. Everything is a stone memorial! We parked next to a stone bench in memoriam. We hiked up to not one, but two stones overlooking a soccer field, both dedicated to the memory of someone.

“Follow the ski lift down the hill to the trees on your right.”

Huh? Ok, it’s July. It is entirely likely that the ski lift is seasonal. More to the point: it’s Massachusetts. You can’t walk ten feet without walking into a tree!

I gave up at that point, because I never found the “trees shaped like a U.” Or the ski lift. Or the correct stone memorial. I did hike up a hill following some power lines, figuring they were the closest thing I was going to find to a ski lift, and since the clues are sometimes all “clever,” maybe the box hider was using “ski lift” more figuratively.

Anyway. I got home sweaty, tired, and wondering how the heck one hides a ski lift that completely in the woods!

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