Carving at Camp

Today was day #2 for my letterboxing interest group at camp. I have a group of 12 girls, ranging in age from 9 to 15. Yesterday, after a brief overview of what letterboxing is and examining the contents of a letterbox, everyone chose a trailname and then designed a stamp image onto an eraser. Today we carved. These girls are great! I was a little nervous as to how the carving would go (and had nightmares of finger gashes), but they got the hang of it right away and several of them carved extra stamps while waiting for the other girls to finish. There were some very creative trailnames and also stamp images. We finished today off by decorating a small purchased logbook with markers and their stamp images. So now they are equipped to letterbox… well almost…

Tomorrow we will be learning what exactly a pace is and how to use a compass, including a little compass exercise that will end at a letterbox I placed for the activity. Then on Thursday we are out on the trail, putting it all together and talking about some of the responsible aspects of letterboxing while we make our way to the box — respect for the environment, leave no trace, discretion and replacing/covering the box when done.

And that will wrap up our little 4-day mini course in letterboxing. The girls are having a lot of fun and we’ve had some onlookers from other sessions wanting to know if the letterboxing interest group is offered next week again.