(stay tuned for a great way to experience the IMA grounds before the end of this post!)

A friend told me about how they went letterboxing on a recent vacation and was surprised that I’d never heard of it before. Letterboxing is similar to its more recent cousin, GeoCaching, and involves hiding small boxes with journals and stamps inside them. The idea being to bring your own stamp and journal with you to collect a log of all the treasures you have found! Letterboxers leave clues to the locations of boxes they have planted online for others to find. Experienced letterboxers can collect hundreds of stamps from around the country and individual boxes can stay alive for many years! As I began to learn a bit more about it… I was hooked!

A Brief History of Letterboxing

Apparently, letterboxing has been around for a long time. Wikipedia’s article on letterboxing says that it originated in England around 150 years ago! Letterboxing seems to have gained popularity in North America in the late 1990’s. In exploring this a bit more online, I was stunned to find out how many boxes exist right around the corner! One popular letterboxing website lists over 46,000 registered letterboxes in the United States and over 1000 in the state of Indiana. There are even 2 letterboxes close by for our blog readers in Zimbabwe… What… am I living in a cave? How could I have missed this one? The thought of all these stealthy hidden little boxes brings out the pirate in me… Arggh!

(A Google Map of Letterbox locations around Indianapolis)

Letterboxing Resources

I’ve found a few great sites to fuel your burning letterboxing habit! Lately, I’ve been looking these sites up on my phone as we sail around with the top down on the Jeep looking for stamps to fill our journal. A good primer on what you need to start letterboxing can be found on this “Getting Started” page.

When you’re ready to find some boxes to search for these are some great links to start with:

• Search Letterboxes on AtlasQuest.com
• Search for Letterboxes on Letterboxing.org

Letterboxing @ IMA

So, why talk about a crazy hobby like letterboxing on the IMA’s blog? Well besides the obvious craft involved in creating some of the stamps I’ve seen… I was stunned to find out that there are two, count ‘em, two letterboxes already hidden on the grounds of the IMA. I’d be breaking the secret code of letterboxers if I gave away their exact locations… but here are the links to the clues so you can find them yourself. We’ve found both of them in the last two weeks, so I know their both still safe and sound. I wonder if our grounds keeping staff knows about these?

• IMA – planted by “Trail Mail Junkie”
• Robert Indiana – planted by “Dream a Dream”

I’m thinking that we’ll have to take it upon ourselves as proud IMA-staffers to plant a few more of these puppies out in the Art and Nature Park before it opens! Any ideas of some good hiding spots?