So, this letter arrives in my mailbox last week.... the envelope full of
notes and postal markings and yellow stickers. The return address is
not one that I knew, and the letter came to my now defunct PO Box.
I opened it ~ and the note inside was written on a page-a-day Far Side
calendar dated May 29 ~ and read it....
and then dropped the letter and did the dance of joy!!!!

The opening line:

"Dear Deborah,
Found your box at Turville Point. How delighted I was...."

The letter went on to say that the box "seemed to need tending"
and included the initials of the family that found it, which they were
using in lieu of personal stamps, and asked if there were more
clues for Madison....

I could not go out to Turville Point until Monday, and my heart was
all pit-a-pat because since they had not found it from clues, it could
have been anywhere out there, it might have been in the lake for all
I knew, since he said they had been fishing!
Monday comes, and I get Melanie all in long pants and hat and bug
stuff and take along a little kit for fixing up the box if I find it ~ wipes
and
paper towels, ziplock bags, new postcards and pen.... and head out in
the late afternoon.
I've not been out this way since I discovered the box gone last November,
and the walk is definitely different in June than it is in the fall.
The trees are fully leafed, and the undergrowth off the trail is thigh-high.
Once you leave the lot and walk into the woods proper it's dark as if
suddenly the sun has gone behind a thick bank of clouds. We meet
a man coming out to the lot and he says the mosquitos are thick.
I tell him we had bug spray, and he shrugs and walks on as if
to say "you're gonna be sorry..."
Melanie walks the whole way, uphill and down, and doesn't trip on
any of the big tree roots or rocks in the trail, 6 months has made a
big difference (well, she is FOUR now, as she will point out at
every opportunity...)
We reach the point where the little trail goes up to the lookout, and
I peek inside the tree.... the box is there!
When I open it, I can see that "seems to need tending" is a polite
understatement. The box is dry to the touch, but inside the plastic
bags is a different story. The beautiful notebook (same one Tom and
Bonita use, I forget the name) is swollen up with moisture, the black
cardboard cover warped and wet and bleeding onto the next pages.
The covers also have a light film of white mold. The notebook pages
are also damp and growing multi-colored stuff of orange, blue, black,
and rose that rival my daughter's science project experiment in bread
mold last spring. At this point, of course, I abandon any thoughts of
fixing it up on the spot, and we head for home. Only 4 mosquito bites
between us, and I count us very lucky indeed.
At home, I bring the treasure inside, inwardly laughing because I
know if any of my kids brought something like this in the house I
would have said "Take that out and put it in the trash immediately!"
The stamp in its separate ziplock is unharmed and easily cleaned
up. I put on latex gloves to salvage pages from the notebook...
the rest goes right back in the bag and into the garbage. I wipe down
the pages with a damp paper towel, and zap them in the microwave.
By this time my nose is tickley and my eyes itchy ~ I'm allergic to
this kind of thing which is why I can't help much when it's time to
clean out the basement :-)
The only notes here that were found by the clues are Steven's and
my kids, all the rest appear to have been serendipitous finds. There's
the note from the man who plays with the Madison Symphony and
knew David Crosby (now I know his name!), and that's all from the
fall. The next entries begin with March 19, a total of 9 spring entries.
Some are from people who came to an event at the Dane County
Coliseum ~ from Detroit (what is a phat party?); a family entry on
Mother's Day with a notation of a child's first birthday; from the
handwriting, a note from the person who sent me the letter (visiting
from Alabama) from this spot they watched an oriole build a nest
with fishing line; and the last entry, from June 11 (temperature 90,
humidity 99.9) signed "Moriarty".

I was so delighted to get that letter that I'm planning to send
them handcarved initial stamps as a thanks, and now I have to
figure out what to do with the letterbox.

Tech notes:
Postcards:
There was only one postcard left in the box (probably because
it was all moldy), but the only one I got in the mail was from
Steven. I assume this is because the stamp image was on the
postcard, and people kept it in lieu of stamping up, maybe)

It's Not The Heat:
How do I keep the thing dry? I can't tell what happened to it,
I don't know if it wintered out there or what, but the bags were
sealed and the box was sealed.... if this damage happened
from March to June, though, even considering that this was
an exceptionally wet spring, I can't see replacing the logbook
etc. every 3 months? Double-boxing seems like it would be
too bulky to hide around here.... should I try the silica gel
packs?
Think I might try leaving laminated cards for info/address as in
Steven's Madison box, and maybe leave out postcards...

INK:
It seems that the black Marvy Matchable ink, which is not a
permanent ink, works really well even when wet! The stamps
that were done in this ink were not faded or runny, and they
didn't bleed the least bit. I'm not sure which pad one of my
daughters used, but there was not a trace of the image left
on the page. Steven's stamp stood up well, too.

Deborah

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