Pinecone Boxing

Chrismas morning held a special Pinecone Production for me - a pinecone quilt created by Sue! The picture to the left shows me unfolding the quilt after removing it from the wrappings.

During the years we've picked up various patterns of pinecone material that was purchased for the intent of creating stamp holders for our boxes. Every once in a while, Sue would stitch a few of them when we ran low. Little did I know that she had been saving most of this fabric to make me a fantastic quilt!

It seems she's spent the last 18 months sneaking this quilt around and working on it when I wasn't home. Sue even went as far as sending it to VT with our son Steve when we were all going up for a weekend and I had a board of directors meeting to attend. While I was at the clubhouse deep in the business of our community, Sue was knee deep in material; sewing like crazy while I was out of the house for several hours. This clandestine practice has gone on for 18 months! The quilt has lived in Steve's closet at home; far away from my curious eyes. I'm still in shock - because Sue & I are usually together so I can't figure out how she found the time to finagle something like this!!!

The quilt, Sue tells me, is the log cabin design. Once the quilt had it's batting and backer applied, Sue hand-quilted around each and every piece of material on the top of the quilt to create a puffy design. All stitched by hand, Sue told me that a few nights she ended up with bloody fingers in her haste to get this quilt finished by Christmas. What a labor of love!!!

We have a finished rec room in our basement where I spend a lot of my free time; reclining while watching TV. It's the best place for me to unwind. Sue dubbed the basement as the "Zone" because I'm always in the zone while in the Zone. We've always used a quilt or a blanket for extra warmth and coziness. You can see, I now have a new reason to visit the Zone . . . a great pinecone quilt to keep me warm; in addition to the new robe and slippers!

     Using our Pinecone Production stamp, Sue created a label for the back of the quilt.

Thanks, Sue, for the best Chrismas gift ever!  

You really are the best!

Are you fairly new to letterboxing?

Have you been boxing a while but want to learn some techniques that others have found to be successful in image transfer, carving, logbook-making, etc?

Several months ago there was some talk on the Newboxers list for a gathering that might give some instruction to those that might want to learn a bit more about letterboxing. There was also some talk on the VT talk list on AQ, where Sue & I volunteered our VT home for some instruction (what little we could offer) but space would have to be limited.

Then, one day on my 45 minute commute home from work (Sue hates when I say "I was thinking on the drive home . . . ,") why not combine it all and have a New Boxers Gathering but have it this spring in southern VT? We could use the special friendship and pricing guidelines that our friends at Austin Hill Inn and the Deerfield Valley Inn offered to our Back to Our Roots gathering last June. It would be perfect.

So, what's the schedule?

Friday night, April 23rd - check in and 6pm Welcome Buffet, followed by a little Intro to Boxing and exchanges

Saturday, April 24th - after breakfast at your inn, join us at 10am at the West Dover Town Hall for an approx 4 hour time slot where you will be broken up into small groups of 5 or 6 and will visit 6 different stations that each take up a different aspect of letterboxing. These stations will be manned by experienced letterboxers who can give some basic instruction as well as imparting some hints and techniques that they've learned themselves or from others. After 20 minutes or so, the groups will all move to the next learning station, etc.

A hot lunch will be served between these sessions followed by some boxing time before we break up for some free time to hunt boxes or plant your newly created box. We'll join up again in the early evening at a local pub style restaurant for a group meal which you will pay on your own. Our hope is to come up with a very cost effective price to cover 2 nights at one of the inns (Friday & Saturday nights) that also include 2 breakfasts and the Friday night buffet. You will be responsible for the hot lunch on Saturday (very cost effective) and Saturday's dinner. Those of you wanting to join us just for the Saturday portion as a day tripper can do that. There will be further instruction on that later.

Sunday, April 25 - After breakfast at your inn, we might have a logbook-making instruction before checkout. Details to come.

And thus, another Pinecone Adventures was born. Check out the Atlas Quest event page for more info. We'll develop a webpage soon once more info is in. Space is limited to 50 boxers so you don't want to delay.

Hope that you can join us!

Once again (and all too quickly,) it's that time of year - the holidays. A time for family and gifts and parties and shopping and running and rushing. Before all of that madness begins, we're reflecting on why, in this crazy economy, we are still so thankful.

While many are without jobs and the holiday season is the furthest thing on their minds, we are so thankful for the following:

Letterboxing - for all that it has done for us. Letterboxes allow you to visit anywhere in the country or the world and find the most unusual places that include a box or two. This hobby has taken me from the computer and the TV (although I still find time for both!) and given us the opportunity to "Just Get Out There & Box!!!"

Friends - all of those special people we've met along the way in our letterboxing career. Some have become very close, family-like friends. Interesting story - our youngest son, Steve, is getting married in July of next year. When we sat down and made our guest list of those people Sue & I wanted to attend the wedding, we were surprised at the number of our really close friends who originally came from the boxing community.

The Outdoors - boxing has given us a profound appreciation and realization of the beauty around us in this country. As Sue & I have traveled, we marvel at amazing sights like a whale breaching off of the Oregon coast, the fantastic rocky Maine coast, the majesty of Stone Mountain in Georgia, the green mountain ranges of Vermont and the stark beauty of a Florida swamp and especially the patchwork landscape of Dartmoor National Park in the UK. All containing boxes and probably all places we would not have known had it not been for letterboxing. We've also learned to be good stewards of the land and protect these irreplaceable and valuable resources.

Endless Creativity - just when we think we've seen it all, someone else comes up with another way to clue or hide a box. You Tube, hidden as links on web pages, emailed WOM's, snail mail teasers. It never ends and helps keep letterboxing fresh and new for Sue & I who have been boxing since June of 2002. The carving ability (and improving abilitites of many) continues to amaze us. Great new carvers are popping up all over the place where years ago there was just a handful of really good carvers. One of the up sides of the growth that this hobby has experienced has been the increase of creative and talented carvers and planters.

Boxing Websites - those clue repositories such as Letterboxing North America and Atlas Quest are invaluable! Sure, there are parts of both sites that we'd love to change (or eliminate) but all-in-all, they co-exist and offer much in the way of learning about and finding letterboxing clues. Just trying to keep up our little blog here brings a further appreciation for the time both Choi (and the other webmasters at LBNA) and Ryan at AQ spend to keep us continually coming back for more! We applaud them for their efforts!

Planters - without you guys, there would be nothing for which to search! We appreciate those special little hidden gems in places that you choose to take us. The more we plant, the more we appreciate the thought process, time and money expended to plant just one letterbox. We look at a box as a contribution to the boxing community and Sue & I are thankful for all of the contributions all of the planters around the world have made. That thrill is still there after following a clue to finally find that hidden box. You never know if it will be there and to find it is still a thrill.

So - putting aside the depressing news of the day with record unemployment, a bad economy, the health care debate et al, it's great to escape into the wonderful world of letterboxing. Now more than ever!  

And for that, Sue & I are the most thankful!

Have a great Thanksgiving and Holiday Season to all of you from the two of us!

I've written before about how our 2 sons think Sue & I are a little nuts chasing Tupperware through the woods. Our oldest son, Matt, thinks letterboxing is a cult. Imagine???

Cults have secret words. Letterboxing has PFX and hitchhikers and such. It's not a cult, right?

Cults have meetings where the members get together to "worship." Letterboxing has gatherings where boxers get together in pursuit of the hunt. It's not a cult, right?

Cult members do not reveal their true names for fear of reappraisal by the authorities. Letterboxers use trail names so if they plant boxes in forbidden places, the authorities cannot trace them. It's not a cult, right?

Cult members celebrate special holidays or important days of the year. Boxers love Boxers Day - the day after Christmas! It's not a cult, right?

Cult members perform some of their rituals after dark. Letterboxers love to go night boxing; especially on a full moon. It's not a cult, right?

Boy - I hope Matt doesn't read this post - Sue & I will really be in trouble! Matt's a dispatcher for the Berlin Police Department and he might encourage his co-workers to investigate us!

But why would he though - it's not a cult . . . . . . . . . . . . right?

As difficult as it is to believe,  Bed & Boxing Redux is next weekend - Friday, October 30 to Sunday, November 1 in beautiful Jackson, NH at the Whitney's Inn. It seems like just last week we had our first B & B event. This year the event takes place on Halloween weekend and we've decided to utilize the holiday to its fullest!

Friday Night's Welcome Buffet will become a Halloween Costume Welcome Buffet. The price for the buffet is included in your weekend room rate and will begin at 7pm! We expect to see many of our boxing friends in full costume and possible some we may not recognize at first!

Saturday will feature a whole day of letterboxing in the Jackson surrounds. There are some new boxes placed for the event and plenty of existing boxes in the area. Be sure to bring your own clues! After a full day of boxing in the crisp mountain air, the group will meet on the top floor of the attached Shovel Handle Pub - a converted barn, where we'll dine together for dinner at 5:30. Afterward, there will some special Halloween-themed fun for all to enjoy. Sunday will feature checkout after breakfast and the trip home with possibly a few boxes on the return.

We hope you will join us. Whitney's Inn will take reservations up until the night before the event (Thursday, October 29.) Details can be found here at our special Bed & Boxing page. Our group is taking over the whole inn so you know there will be plenty of mischief and boxing going on! Hope to see you there!

In case you are ever wondering what kind of letterboxing policies might exist in one of your area parks or one that you might be visiting, the webmasters at the LBNA have made your life a whole lot easier!

Without any fanfare, they've introduced a new section on the website to cover Park Policies; arranged by state. If you don't see your particular park listed there and you know the policy, there is even an option to contact the webmasters and they will put that into the listing.

There's also a new email component as well! Thanks to Choi and the other webmasters for this very useful addition to this historic website!

It's hard to believe but our second annual Bed & Boxing Redux event is just around the corner - the weekend of October 30 t0 November 1. As of today, we have 26 boxers signed up. If you missed last year's event, you'll want to make this one. Check out the AQ event page here and our special webpage with all the particulars here.

Don't delay - there's fun planned all weekend long including our Friday Night Halloween Costumed Welcome Buffet. Come dressed as your letterboxing persona or just a costume that pleases you. There will be prizes for the best of the best. Last year's buffet ran $15 per person but we've negotiated with the innkeeper for a price reduction and he's included the price of the meal in the room rates - which he also lowered as well!

It's an inflation busting weekend of fun in the mountains of the Jackson, NH area. Come and have a hauntingly good time. And - like most Pinecone Adventures - expect the unexpected!

How do we even begin . . .

You might have read our story from July 13th entitled One of THOSE Moments. We told about meeting Tony & Veronica's new son, Patrick and how happy and proud we were for the 3 of them. Some of you might have seen the three of them at the America Boxes gathering in Coventry several weeks ago with Patrick calling "Mommy" and "Daddy" during the day.

Patrick was placed with Tony & Veronica as part of an adoption process. They had a year before everything became final. Last week, after Patrick was part of their family for 2 months, they were contacted and told that Patrick's grandparents petitioned the court and the judge awarded the grandparents custody of Patrick until his mother got her head on straight - after 2 years of Patrick being placed in foster care.

Needless to say, we are all devastated. I print this story with the full permission of Tony & Veronica, whom we spent some time with last night. They are coming along but will need many, many months until they can fully recover from this tragedy. They were told that 1% of all state adoptions end like this. Our question is "Why them?" and "Why now?"

We ask that you give Tony & Veronica their space now, per their request, but keep them in your thoughts and prayers as they begin the mending process. And if you see them on the trails or at a gathering in the near future, give them support but it might be best if you didn't raise the issue. Let them talk about it as and when they see fit. Sue & I are devastated and can only imagine the pain these special pair of friends are feeling.

Sue summed it up best when she told me "I couldn't feel worse than if this was our own son!"

Time heals everything, they say. We hope time speeds up and heals these broken hearts . . . .

A boxer in CT who goes by the trail name of PAWCA has been planting a series of boxes in old and often obscure cemeteries entitled Pushing Up Daisies. Sue noticed them a while ago, as did Nancy, one of the Schmoopies with whom we box.

So, we got together and created special, daisy-covered logbooks in which to hold our images and set out a week ago Sunday. The Schmoopies traveled to about 8 cemeteries and ended up with 10 daisy images - many of them store bought. The quest brought us to out-of-the-way, obscure resting places filled with so much history.

This past weekend, Sue & I headed to NH from VT to get 2 more daisies as well as some other boxes in the light rain. On our way home yesterday afternoon, we stopped in Deerfield, MA for the final daisy clue that we had brought along with us for the weekend. We found the starting location as described in the clue - a petrified snowball - and looked down the hill to the older part of the cemetery. As we got halfway to the exterior wall that borders the older part, we both felt an instant chill come across the exterior of our bodies. By the time I could verbalize what I was feeling, Sue felt the exact same thing. And then we both got the chills/goose bumps on our body as well. This feeling didn't last long and wasn't a passing breeze or anything "earthly."

As we got near the first box, the feeling disappeared and we were fine. As lovers of old cemeteries (I've photographed so many headstones over the years,) we've never quite experienced anything like that. It was really unusual but not so unusual that we didn't take the time to find the box - or the second box located there!

We'd love to hear from others who visit the cemetery to see if they, too, feel that same chill or an unusual experience.