Seek and Ye Shall Find (Maybe) by Jack Killeen

(Maybe)

Enter the world of LETTERBOXING & GEOCACHING

By Jack Killeen (not pictured)

reason, has never discovered the joys of mark the notebook contained in each letterboxing and is more likely to mistake a letterbox. Blindauer’s is an ampersand strange box in the woods as something evil with a "t" made out of its tail — “St. rather than an object of great beauty and Ampersand,” he calls it. A wonderfully joy. A term borrowed from the well-known multi-layered meaning, encompassing the Harry Potter books where a muggle is St. Louis Cardinals logo, the word “stamp” someone without magic powers.”) and Blindauer’s love of the ampersand.

Next time you’re in a park, or a Penny’s stamp is a dog paw. restaurant, or City Museum, look around. Geocaching offers a clean, what-you’dThere may be a letterbox, or a geocache, expect-in-2021 website, as well as an easy to right there, under that thing. use, well-designed phone application.

Or look at the people. Are any of them Unlike letterboxing, caches don’t have searching, but not too conspicuously? Do stamps. If the cache is big enough, there they mutter to themselves, retrace Letterboxing takes a are trinkets, or “swag,” that you’re allowed to their steps, then perk up and smile? crafty spin on the swap out with an item of your own: action figures, Do their heads spin and their eyes search-and-find slinkies, a nice glove or whatever will fit. There’s a flash, looking for anyone watching? sport. Participants list where you sign your name to feel a sense of You may have found a letterbox- who successfully accomplishment and having existed in this er/geocacher. Letterboxing find a letterbox are cruelly forgetful world which pops you in its and geocaching are like siblings. At rewarded with a mouth and chews like a baseball player — you’re first glance, one sees the family face stamp (don’t take it; the sunflower seed — then spits you out on the — they’re both just use it) ground to decompose wet treasure-hunt style with all the others. activities that can involve hiking, Blindauer and I met in the St. Louis clue-solving and befuddlement — but Art Museum parking lot on a Friday upon closer inspection, the differences morning. He lent me a chunk of a pink reveal themselves. eraser and some carving materials with

Letterboxing takes a crafty spin on the which I made a stamp on the trunk of my search-and-find sport. Participants who car. It was a square, windmill-ish design, successfully find a letterbox, which range something I doodle in the margins of my from “drive-by” (five to ten minutes) to notebooks. We drove to the southwest“thru-hike” (fifteen-plus miles) in ern-most corner of the park, my car difficulty, are rewarded with a stamp (don’t tailing his, where our letterboxing take it; just use it). Most stamps often adventure began. hand-carved and wholly unique. For Six years ago, as an incoming senior Blindauer, it’s as much about making in high school, I took a geocaching stamps as finding them, if not more. summer school class. The course Letterboxers have their own stamps to promised a P.E. credit, which normally 46 RFT CITY GUIDE 2021 riverfronttimes.com

opening page: Patrick Blindauer and his search partner Penny at an undsclosed site. above: The hunt will take you to nearby places you've somehow never been. right: Messages from the other people like you, who took the time and effort to wade out into the world and find something unknown, await your successful find. Photos: Jack Killeen

took a whole semester, in five days — a good deal, I thought.

What I remember from that week: rain, heavy, every day; Teacher 1 at the front of the bus saying he never cared much for beer and Teacher 2 replying that, well, it’s an acquired taste, like coffee; wading through knee-high water on a trail in Castlewood; hiding in a tower in Lone Elk Park with three other students as we waited for the rain to stop while we ate our lunches, then eventually deciding to brave it; water soaking through my rain jacket and all my clothes; the high of finding a cache after a half hour of scouring dead leaves and fallen logs, occasionally looking up at the branches, thinking no way that bastard put it up there. In a way that I can’t explain, it felt like Lord of the Rings.

All that being said, letterboxing was what I expected. The memories and feelings from that high school summer — the searching and the frustration and the light, little excitement upon discovery — came back to me one at a time. “Ah yes, this,” I found myself thinking.

You’ve got to have hobbies, otherwise you’ll go crazy expecting everything you do to have a big, great meaning. Go outside, I say, go look for a box hidden in the woods or on a sidewalk a few blocks from your apartment and do it just for fun. Sometimes it’s nice to do something meaningless. Meaningless things are fun, too.

Blindauer and I had a good time. We discussed crosswords, Blindauer’s five-year-old daughter and that Riverfront Times Art Director Evan Sult plays drums for Sleepy Kitty, and we also found two letterboxes. When I drove off, rolling down the passenger-side windows to wave goodbye, I felt grateful to have met another human and spent an hour looking for notebooks in the woods to mark with a stamp. n