BOXING ANNIVERSARY!

I just about can't believe it! I have now been letterboxing for over a year now. Blue Butterfly and I found our first box on June 18, 2005. It was Corazon's Gibraltar of the Confederacy in Vicksburg, MS. Finding that one box really got us hooked....we officially became addicted! Now, suddenly we're finding reasons to go to out-of-the-way places, sneaking around in bushes, taking trips, but taking very ...shall we say..."curious" routes to get back home so we can find these little treasures that mean so much to us.

Then, we decided it was time to start planting boxes...but would anyone even want to find them? We're not brilliant artists and we didn't want to disappoint anyone. Little did we know that others would appreciate our boxes, too. Letterboxers are such a great community of people, as we would later find out. So, we planted a few boxes and eagerly awaited those e-mail notices with the subject line: LBNA Status Changed.

We'd read extensively about letterboxing before we actually began, and even after we found our first box, we continued to educate ourselves as much as possible. We were wanting to go to a gathering, but we also knew that the annual Texas gatherings were held in the spring of each year and we'd have to wait a long time to go to one. Then, we found out about the Terrors of Telge Gathering that would be held in Houston. BB and I discussed it and decided we would go! SOOOO.....after we got home after a very late Friday night football game, we got up early and headed south. We made our way to Telge park and found a few of the permanent as well as temporary boxes that had been placed there. We were so excited to find some boxes by people we'd only heard about, but never found their boxes. Our favorite (or at least mine) was Mother of 5's Mr. Bones. Mr. Bones is a series of 4 boxes, and you had to put the skeleton together as you went along. I didn't know the difference between the pelvis and the rib cage until after I'd stamped the torso into my book....but at least I realized it before I stamped all of Mr. Bones in! The bottom line is that poor Mr. Bones is dancing on his head in my log book....but I digress....
As it got closer to the allotted time, we awaited the arrival of the other letterboxers. The first person we met was TeamKing. Soon after, The Legendary Silver Eagle and Baby Bear arrived. (We tried not to act star struck....I hope it worked). Others who came in were members of Gramatrick, Mother of 5, and two members of Birds of a Feather: Sea Dove and Liberty Eagle, the Frye Team, and Runs For Chocolate (sorry if I left anyone out). We were in letterboxing heaven! We found out that we weren't the only ones out there who did this and we talked about finding various boxes.....the hard ones....the fun ones...the easy ones...wow! After spending quite a bit of time at the table stamping into all of those event boxes and chatting, we had to part ways. We were sad to leave, but it left us feeling great about our new hobby and the people who enjoy it along with us.

Ok, Ok, I think I've gone on long enough. I started off all that to say it's been quite a year and I can't EVEN imagine now what I did with my time before letterboxing.
The hiking? Great!
The finding? Great!
The stamping in? Great!
The planting? Great!
The events? Great!
The people? WOW! FANTASTIC! COULDN'T BE A BETTER GROUP OF PEOPLE!!

Thanks to all of the people in the letterboxing community for making my year a fun-filled one.