Try going into your local library (brick & mortar or online) and see if they
have the digital archive. I live in Portland, OR and can get it using my
library card (or at least I could at one time).

schwelvis

On 3/28/06, Silent Doug wrote:
>
> At 10:41 AM 3/28/2006, you wrote:
> >Can anyone provide a copy or link to the Smithsonian Magazine article:
> >"They Live and Breathe Letterboxing." It looks like the Smithsonian
> >has taken it off their website.
>
> This is still active:
> http://www.smithsonianmagazine.com/issues/1998/april/letterboxing.php
>
> It's only the abstract of the article, not the entire thing, but
> that's all that they ever had on their web site.
>
> SD
>
>
> |-#-#-#-#-#-#-#-#-#-#-#-#-#-#-#-#-#-#-|
> Silent Doug, P63 F1249 X179 E28
> http://www.letterboxing.info
> Get a Clue -- Go Letterboxing!
>
>
>
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

I got this from my libraries subscription services.

THEY LIVE AND BREATHE LETTERBOXING


AN OBSCURE GROUP OF INTREPID COLLECTORS GIVE THIS ENGLISH VERSION OF
ORIENTEERING THEIR HEARTY STAMP OF APPROVAL

ADRIAN WILLIAMS IS AN ENGLISHMAN WITH A MISSION you might call an
obsession: to find plastic containers that are hidden under rocks. He
is in his early 40s, and carries on with a bluff manner and
considerable energy. He has worked as a garage manager, a nurse and a
Web-page designer but devotes his free time almost entirely to this
pursuit. The hidden containers-they're known as letterboxes-are
scattered through the wild country of Dartmoor National Park, a vast
region of high, barren hills in the southwestern English county of
Devon. Adrian is one of several thousand people who have taken up the
search for them. He told me that when he moved from London to Devon a
few years ago, he'd never heard of letterboxing. Now, whenever he
can, he leaves home early to get to the moor, comes back late and
spends his evenings on the phone talking shop with other "boxers," or
entering new clues into his computer database. "I live and breathe
letterboxing," Adrian said. "It's a way of life for me, and I'm not
the only one." Letterboxing is something between a sport and a hobby,
sort of a combination of orienteering (Smithsonian, June 1992) and
treasure hunting that consists of using maps, clues and compasses in
the search for containers. Each letterbox contains a notebook and a
unique rubber stamp. Each letterboxer carries a notebook and a personal stamp.

Once a box is found, a small ritual called "stamping up" is
performed. The letterboxer inks the stamp from the box and presses it
into his own notebook, then inks his personal stamp and presses that
into the little visitors' book that's kept in the box. It's double
proof that he's found the box. The stamp copy he takes home is the
reward for his effort. Then the letterboxer reseals the box, replaces
it in its hiding place, checks the clue sheet and the compass
bearings, and heads off in search of the next letterbox.

There are thousands of boxes hidden on Dartmoor. They've been put out
a few at a time by letterboxers themselves. The whole thing goes on
without any governing body or official sanction. It came into being
spontaneously, and it's the people who participate that keep it
going. Anyone can go letterboxing, any day of the year.

Adrian, his wife, Melissa, and their children, 11-year-old Tegan and
8-year-old Ben, were heading out one Saturday last November, and they
invited me along. On our way from the Williamses' house, in the town
of Okehampton, to Dartmoor, we drove down lanes in the Devon farm
country so narrow that ferns growing out of the stone walls brushed
against both sides of the car. We eventually went through a gate,
followed a track to the edge of the moor, where we parked, and
started hiking up a boulder-strewn hillside. Some shaggy cattle
ambled off before us.

Adrian said that when he gets in a new place, it takes a little while
for him to get a feel for where things are and how to interpret the
clues. Before long, he announced that we were in an area that was
heavily salted with letterboxes. (It should be pointed out, however,
that someone who was not looking for them could hike on this hill for
years and never see a letterbox.) He read from a set of clues: "Hut
at 113 degrees. Cairn at 108 degrees." He looked around and located
what he thought were the hut and cairn referred to in the clue. The
cairn was just a hundred yards up the hill; the hut was more than a mile away.

Adrian judged where he would have to put himself so that his compass
readings to those two landmarks would match the ones specified in the
clue. "Should be just over that way," he ventured. Melissa had a
somewhat different idea about where those bearings would cross, but
she only rolled her eyes and said to me in an undertone: "How many
letterboxers have divorced over a difference in bearings on Dartmoor?"

In a couple of minutes, Melissa pulled the box from under a rock, and
we all settled on our haunches to stamp up. Most letterboxes are
actually pill bottles-plastic screw-top containers, about three
inches in diameter by four inches high, that were originally used to
supply pharmacists with wholesale quantities of pills. These are
weatherproof, plentiful and free for the asking. We had our first box
of the day, and Adrian announced, "We're off. Now we're in form."

The British are known for eccentricity, but letterboxers, one
aficionado told me not long before I went afield with the Williamses,
are the greatest eccentrics of all. They trace their curious pastime
back to 1854, when a Victor-ian gentleman walker put his calling card
in a bottle and stuck the bottle into a bank at Cranmere Pool in a
remote part of Dartmoor. Other walkers who found the bottle also left
their cards, and perhaps a postcard that the next walker could carry
off the moor and send back to its owner. In 1894, a letterbox
appeared at Belstone Tor. (A "tor" is a hill marked by a rocky
outcropping. There are about 140 on Dartmoor.) In 1938, another was
placed at Ducks' Pool.

As late as the 1970s, there were only a few dozen letterboxes on
Dartmoor, though by then rubber stamps had replaced calling cards and
postcards. In the past couple of decades, the number of boxes has
exploded, while at the same time boxers have tried to keep the whole
thing quiet. Most letterboxers live in Devon, though some come from
other parts of England and a few even come from other parts of the world.

With the exception of a compass and the rubber stamps, there is
refreshingly little gear to buy. The only "currency" is the clue
sheets that lead to newly placed boxes-the owner can exchange these
for clue sheets leading to other people's boxes. An organization
called the 100 Club publishes a catalogue of some of the letterbox
clues. These clues don't exactly pave the way to the letterboxes.
Here are a couple I picked at random from the catalogue:

"Favourite Lunch Spots No. 22. Shapley Tor. Lone tree by road 312
degrees. Huge square boulder 346 1/2 degrees. Hut circle 277 1/2 degrees."

"Reynard's Happy Hour. Bellever 341 degrees. Hay Tor 51 degrees.
Track disappears over hill 101 degrees. Under large rock half covered
with heather."

And just to spice things up, some clues include cryptic references,
or come in the form of anagrams. The 100 Club sells patches that
advertise that the wearer has found 100 boxes, 500 boxes and so on.

The rubber stamps used in letterboxing have become increasingly (and
competitively) elaborate. Many boxers put out series of stamps that
commemorate some aspect of Dartmoor. Adrian has just put out a series
on places with local bird names, called "Dartmoor Most Fowl." Roger
and Stephanie Paul of Denbury have put out a series called "Dartmoor
Farmers, Past and Present." Some artistically inclined boxers carve
their own stamps out of rubber blocks; these "handcuts" are
especially sought after.

By the time Adrian and Melissa had found that first box, we'd come
well up the hill. Looking back, I could see the green and hedged farm
country just below us. Farther off was the city of Plymouth and the
entrance to Plymouth Harbor. As I watched, the distant mist rose,
revealing a silvery sheen on the water of the English Channel. The
clouds above it looked ominous.

But the sun was shining where we were. It was a good area, and there
were boxes to find. We worked our way to the top of Stalldown Barrow,
picking up five or six more boxes in the next hour. Only once did we
see another walker, several hundred yards off. Adrian guessed that
she was a letterboxer; she veered away when she saw us.

In fact, letterboxers seldom cross paths out on the moor, though the
keen ones get to know each other nonetheless. When they find a box,
they look to see whose personal stamps are already in the notebook.
Being first in the visitors' book carries high prestige. Though they
may never meet or even know each other's real names, the regular
group all know each other by the nicknames on their "personals,"
which often include a play on the boxer's name or hometown: the
"Topsham Torists," the "Dartmoor Carter-pillar," the "Plymstock Soggy
Soxers." The Williamses' personal reads "Have Feet Will Travel."

The typical letterboxers are probably a family with children who have
gotten their hands on the 100 Club's catalogue and have trekked out
to the moor with a compass and a picnic lunch for a day of fresh air
and adventure. But a small group of the keenest boxers also go after
"word-of-mouth" boxes. These are letterboxes that aren't mentioned in
the catalogue and whose owners circulate the clues only to other insiders.

A strict protocol applies to clue exchange. One never asks for
another's clues. You can offer your clues, but only if you've been
around long enough to have the idea that your clues will be accepted.
The exchange of clues often starts at the pub and continues by mail.
Adrian checked the clue sheet we were using that day, and said that
we should head over to the northern side of Stalldown Barrow and down
into the valley.

As we walked, we could see a row of standing stones left by
prehistoric people. Some of the ponies that wander free on Dartmoor
had worked their way among the stones, and from where we were, clumps
of ponies and the standing stones alternated across the horizon. We
walked on till we came to the steep slope on the far side of
Stalldown Barrow. The River Erme snaked through the valley at our
feet. A "tail" of white water marked each boulder in the river. Up
the mottled slope on the far side of the river, more than a mile
away, we could see a farmer on an all-terrain vehicle herding sheep.
With the help of a pair of energetic Border collies, he gathered the
sheep toward the corner of an ancient stone wall. We could just hear
his shouts to his dogs, and the sheep, which had been scattered
specks on the hillside, coalesced into pools of white with tributary streams.

But we weren't there for sight-seeing-there were boxes to find. We
slogged our way down the hill (Dartmoor is almost uniformly wet
underfoot) to a rocky gully called Smuggler's Hole. It was another
rich area for letterboxes. Adrian and Melissa found a couple of boxes
by using clues. Tegan found a couple just by looking. "That's two to
Tegan," Adrian called. "Come on, Ben, you're lagging." Adrian checked
through the notebook that he'd taken from one of the boxes we'd
found. He recognized all the stamps.

"It's the usual gang," he said. Then, using the felt-tip markers he
had brought for just this purpose, Adrian spent a good ten minutes
coloring this stamp-it was a picture of a swashbuckling smuggler-so
that he would have a particularly attractive copy for his collection.
Some of the more serious letterboxers like to take copies of stamps
on note cards, which they later sort and mount in binders. "When you
look at your collection of stamps on a winter's evening," Adrian
said, "it gives you something to remember: who you were with, and how
you found it." We got a few more stamps in the gully before the storm
that I'd seen earlier out on the English Channel broke over the top
of Stalldown Barrow. Gusts of rain started to lash us. Even Adrian,
who had told me earlier that a letterboxer's unfailing motto is "Just
one more box," admitted that it was time to quit. We pulled up our
hoods, put our heads down to the storm and followed a trail along the
River Erme back to the car.

Once in the car, Adrian and Melissa looked through the stamps we'd
collected, a total of 20. They included pictures of a fox peering
from its den, a row of standing stones (a handcut), three different
versions of smugglers and a female short-eared owl. There was also a
stamp commemorating Her Majesty's Customs and Excise service; it was
found in a letterbox hidden under a rock overlooking Smuggler's Hole.
The verdict on the day? Not bad.

Pat Clatworthy has collected thousands of stamps in her 18 years of
boxing, though she goes out only on weekends. Pat is a trim, vigorous
woman of youthful middle age who works for the emergency-preparedness
office of the Devon County Council. She agreed to take me out one day
in sunny weather that contradicted Dartmoor's reputation for rain and gloom.

Pat started off at a brisk pace, providing a commentary over her
shoulder as she walked. "Letterboxing seems to satisfy a lot of human
traits," she said. "It gives a sense of adventure, a sense of
achievement and satisfaction to collectors. You're pitting your wits
against someone else's. And it's a great leveler: you'll see a doctor
out talking over clues with a Boy Scout. I think it's good for the
Boy Scout, and it's especially good for the doctor."

We passed Nun's Cross Farm, one of the old Dartmoor farms that's been
abandoned this century, a victim of the poor, acidic soil and the
harsh climate. Using the stone cross and a fir tree for bearings, Pat
soon located a box. With the alacrity that comes of long practice,
she unloaded her pack for the stamping up: a plastic pad to sit on;
two plastic containers filled with cards, ink pads, markers and her
personal; a notebook wrapped in a plastic bag; and a thermos of tea.

"Coming out for a day of letterboxing is like planning a battle
campaign," Pat said. "I'd feel lost without my pack of gear." (Pat is
also a World War II buff.) Her other crucial piece of equipment is a
golf club handle minus the head. She uses it to probe for boxes under
rocks and in mossy banks, and as a walking stick. She pokes ground
that looks soft before she steps. "It stops you from walking into
suspect bits," she said.

We rambled on for several miles, finding boxes here and there, until
we reached Ducks' Pool, the second-most- famous site on Dartmoor
after Cranmere Pool. At neither of these locations is there a pool,
nor much of anything to distinguish the area from the miles of
surrounding grassland, other than its letterboxing history. These are
the sites of the two letterboxes that are shown on the map of
Dartmoor. And on the ground, small monuments make the letterboxes
impossible to miss.

Plenty of people around Dartmoor think these should be the only two
letterboxes. The very eccentricity of letterboxing seems to breed
suspicion among people who don't participate. This comes out, partly,
in accusations that letterboxers trample vegetation and disturb
antiquities. For their part, park officials have responded by
consulting with boxers and publishing a code of conduct-which seems
to be well heeded. I noticed that boxers don't mind pointing to the
damage done by foxhunters and trail riders. The horseback riders
point at mountain bikers and hang gliders.

The farmers who have rights to the common grazing land on Dartmoor
(they're called "commoners") worry about recreational users
disturbing their livestock. Few people seem happy about the presence
of the military, which trains regularly on Dartmoor. A park ranger I
talked to said that a big part of his job is balancing the claims of
various users-a job made somewhat trickier by the fact that the land
within park boundaries in Britain remains in private ownership. I
heard a cockeyed rumor in a pub one night that the Prince of Wales,
who is the largest landowner on Dartmoor, wishes that the whole place
would become a strict nature preserve. I quickly got the impression
that whichever group of users was looking at Dartmoor could see very
clearly the damage-real or supposed-that every other group was
causing. It was not long before I got a taste of this myself.

Using compass bearings, Pat and I came to Ducks' Pool across an
unmarked grassy plain. We hadn't seen another person for hours, but
as we approached we saw a man coming from the other direction,
apparently also making for Ducks' Pool. I hung back a bit, to observe
this meeting. Pat kept to her own business, avoiding conversation. I
finally came up and the man hailed me cheerily. He looked to be about
60, and had a rosy complexion and white hair. He told me that he'd
just walked eight miles, and there was sweat on his brow to prove it.
"This your first time here?" he asked. Well, that's a friendly
opening, I thought, but I had misjudged my man. He turned out to be
an anti-letterboxer on the lookout for a victim. I had walked into his trap.

"Look at this photo." He thrust it under my nose. It showed three
young women having a picnic by the Ducks' Pool rock. "This was taken
in 1957. Look at the erosion that's been caused by letterboxers since
then. The ground around the rock was way up here, then. Look what's
been lost!" Pat started to say something about natural erosion, but
the man would have none of it, and continued his harangue. Finally,
he seemed to have judged that he had browbeaten us into submission.
He glanced at his watch. "Twelve miles to go," he said. "I'd better
be off if I'm going to make it home by teatime." And away he strode
over the hill.

Even though letterboxers tend to avoid each other on the moor, a
group of them congregates every Wednesday evening at the Dolphin
Hotel in the town of Bovey Tracey. It's a friendly, noisy gathering,
and a good place to hear letterboxing stories. I met Godfrey
Swinscow, who seems to be the unofficial godfather of modern-day
letterboxers. He told me that he'd found his first box in 1935.
"Letterboxing is better than watching the telly," Godfrey told me.
"It keeps the boys out of the pub, and the girls from chasing the
boys." Not that Godfrey minds some good fun. I heard about a
practical joke that some still-undiscovered boxers once played on
him. He went out one day on the promise of finding a new box with an
especially nice stamp. Along the way, he collected a series of notes
with progressively outlandish directions. Being a good sport, he
followed the directions until eventually he ended up walking across
the moor, dressed in a frock and bonnet, chant-ing, "I believe in
fairies and pixies."

I heard about the boxer who had let it be known that he was planning
to set out a new box at a certain spot at midnight on New Year's Eve.
When he got to his spot, 45 minutes late, he came upon three cars
full of cold, impatient letterboxers waiting in the dark for the
chance to be first in the book.

Chris Jones told me that he thought there were maybe 60 to 100
"hard-core" letterboxers. "A lot of other people do it for their
kids," he said. "That's fine. I won't decry that." But only a
hard-core boxer would put himself in the position that Chris did one
day. He needed two more boxes to complete a series and found himself
on the wrong side of a river on a day when the rain was "bucketing"
down. He and his partner walked along the riverbank for a mile,
looking for a place to cross. "The river was in full spate, really
flowing," he recalled. "Finally we just waded in, went up to our
thighs. As wet as we were, what had we to lose? And how would we ever
live it down if it got around that we were beaten by a little bad weather?"

Earlier, Pat Clatworthy had presented me with a North Dartmoor
Official Passport, a whimsical document that ensured my protection
from "Pixies and many other obscurities." In spite of that small
honor, I got the feeling people in the pub were keeping an eye on me,
not in any hostile way but out of a concern that my presence might
foretell the arrival of crowds of heavy-footed "grockles"-a word from
Devon for people who aren't.

A day later, I was alone on the moor, a clue sheet (solemnly lent to
me by Adrian) in one hand, the map of Dartmoor (it measures
approximately three by four feet when unfolded) in the other. I
checked the sheet and found a set of clues that started from the
eastern corner of the abandoned Doe Tor Farm. I located the farm on
the map, hiked up there and read the clues.

"Go 132 paces on 107 degrees to tree." I aligned the compass with
north, took a sighting on 107 degrees, and there was a gnarled
hawthorn tree. My spirits rose. Adrian had warned me that "paces" is
a notoriously subjective unit of measure, but 132 of my paces brought
me to within a few feet of the hawthorn. I felt like a child playing
find-the-thimble when everyone starts shouting, "Warmer, warmer!"
Last clue: "Box is 12 paces from tree on 280 degrees in clitter" (a
Devon word for a jumble of broken rocks). Standing next to the tree,
I used the compass to find 280 degrees, took 12 steps in that
direction and looked down. My eye caught a hint of something
man-made-the box. I took a copy of the stamp. My first solo letterbox!

Then I checked the clue sheet and found one of Adrian's boxes listed.
I knew he'd be pleased if I stamped his book, so I decided to try for
it. Here is the clue, verbatim: "Dartmoor's Lost Unicorns No. 5-Hero,
5377, 8473, Have Feet Will Travel, FP 205 degrees. Cross 181/2
degrees. Large chimney on farm 241 degrees. Tip of dead tree 3151/2
degrees. Tip of pointed rock 70 degrees and 9p away. Under rock on
edge of clitter." The name of the stamp comes first: Dartmoor's Lost
Unicorn No. 5-Hero. Adrian's code name is Have Feet Will Travel. The
two four-digit numbers, 5377 and 8473, are the map-grid references;
using them, I got myself into the right neighborhood.

Once I was in the right neighborhood, the stone cross on Brat Tor was
the most obvious landmark. Again aligning my compass with north, I
walked across a hill 40 or 50 feet until the cross bore on 181/2
degrees. Now I had a line from me to the cross and beyond. I knew
that the box had to be somewhere along that line. To find it, I
needed to determine where another bearing in the clue crossed the
line. I knew that "FP" stood for flagpole. I looked in the direction
of 205 degrees and saw some vague smudges in the distance that might
have been flagpoles. Or might not. I decided to try another landmark.
"Tip of dead tree 3151/2 degrees." I could see a cluster of trees
around Doe Tor Farm a mile or so to the north, and one of them looked
dead. I walked several hundred yards downhill, all the while keeping
the cross on 181/2 degrees until the dead tree was on 315 degrees.
Good. I was standing at the intersection of those two bearings. The
only trouble was, I was out in the middle of a grassy area, far from
the edge of clitter. Obviously, I had picked out the wrong dead tree.
Back to the clues.

"Large chimney on farm 241 degrees." I peered in the direction of 241
degrees. Ahh! Miles away, almost lost in mist, was a blocky shape
that might have been a farmhouse. I couldn't make out a chimney, but
this was the only possible choice. To put that farm on 241 degrees, I
had to walk back uphill. That would return me to the clitter, which
was good, but it would leave my precious dead tree way off the mark.

I walked up the hill, using the compass to check the stone cross and
the farmhouse until I thought I was at the spot where their bearings
crossed. I looked for a dead tree somewhere around 315 degrees. There
were a couple of trees in the distance on the far bank of the River
Lyd, but neither of them was close to 315 degrees, and neither
appeared to be dead. So, what about that other clue-the pointed rock
nine paces away on 70 degrees? I was surrounded by pointed rocks; it
was the Times Square of pointed rocks. But as I was looking around, I
saw, maybe ten feet away, a five-foot-tall dead tree. Adrian, you
crafty bloke! Two steps put it on 315 degrees. A few minutes later, I
pulled out the letterbox.

I couldn't find the next two boxes at all, but then I got two in
quick succession. The next one would have taken me back up Doe Tor.
By then the sky was getting "dimpsey"-another of those Devon words. I
hadn't seen a soul in many hours, and no one in the world had a clue
where I was. I gave up the idea of "one more box" and started back.
Pausing on the side of High Down, I looked across the valley. It was
a bleak, empty scene. As I stood there, a gibbous moon came over the
shoulder of Doe Tor.

I had been out with Adrian near Doe Tor a few days earlier. We had
stopped for lunch on the side of a hill called Great Kneeset. Through
a notch on the horizon between Lints Tor and Black Tor we could see a
bit of the lowland England where people live and work. "People down
there, busy, busy, busy, rushing around," Adrian mused. What we could
see of Dartmoor, on the other hand, was empty but for the two of us.

For millennia, the wet bleakness had kept people away. Traces of the
few who had ventured onto the moor were still visible: the tinners
had left piles of tailings; farmers had left stone walls; soldiers
had left some rough roads and bomb craters; religious people had left
standing stones and carved crosses. And, of course, letterboxers had
been there, too. By then I knew that out in the wild country before
us were thousands of pill bottles hidden under rocks. "It's a funny
world," Adrian said, "isn't it."

PHOTO (COLOR): After finding the letterbox near Nun's Cross Farm, Pat
Clatworthy uses her personal stamp (at left, above) to "sign" the
visitors' book, and records the letterbox stamp in her notebook.

PHOTO (COLOR): While his Border collie, Poppy, waits patiently,
Adrian Williams collects a stamp on the monument that commemmerates
the first letterbox, which is located at Cranmere Pool.

PHOTO (COLOR): Taking shelter from the wind, Roger and Stephanie Paul
examine a clue sheet in the ruin of a 19th-century mine house. The
two of them have been "boxing" for 14 years.

PHOTO (COLOR): Shirley Perry sights through a compass to get a fix on
her bearings.

PHOTO (COLOR): Even though letterboxers tend to avoid each other on
the moor, a group congregates every Wednesday at the Dolphin Hotel in
the town of Bovey Tracey.

PHOTO (COLOR): Shirley Perry lays down her yellow-and-black walking
stick to retrieve the letterbox hidden at Doctor Blackall's Drive,
under the "squarish rock" described on the clue sheet.

PHOTO (COLOR): Godfrey Swinscow, who began collecting in 1935, enjoys
one of his notebooks.

~~~~~~~~

By By CHRIS GRANSTROM

PHOTOGRAPHS BY PATRICK WARD

This is the author's first SMITHSONIAN feature. The photographer made
his debut in 1982 in a picture essay on American eccentricities.

Copyright of Smithsonian is the property of Smithsonian Magazine. The
copyright in an individual article may be maintained by the author in
certain cases. Content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites
or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express
written permission. However, users may print, download, or email
articles for individual use.
Source: Smithsonian, Apr98, Vol. 29 Issue 1, p82, 8p
Item: 414724




[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Thanks Melissa. That's the first time I've read it. No
wonder it inspired the start of letterboxing in North
America.

Choi