Monday, June 25, 2007

Questions of LB Etiquette

A handful of the local LBers got together on Saturday morning to brainstorm ways to help new letterboxers learn LB etiquette and hopefully, reduce lost or damaged boxes. The McMonkeys, Nugglebugs, Ahistory, half of C2B2, and I shared ideas, and would like to share them with the rest of you.

I thought it would be easier to break the ideas into several posts. Any of you with suggestions/refinements may post your comments to that topic. Then I will try to revise and repost each topic.

So here is the group’s first suggestion. Although everyone present agreed that a small sheet of helpful hints would be great to tuck into individual boxes, we felt that some hints might be useful before they even went out hunting. It was suggested that a brief blurb be added to the top of everyone’s clues - something concise and in capital letters -
such as:

BE DISCREET IN RETRIEVING THE BOX. COME BACK LATER IF THERE ARE OTHERS IN THE AREA.

IF POSSIBLE, TAKE THE BOX AWAY FROM ITS HIDING SPOT TO LOG IN.

PUT ALL COMPONENTS BACK TOGETHER AS YOU FOUND THEM AND BE SURE THE BOX IS SECURELY CLOSED.

REPLACE THE BOX EXACTLY WHERE YOU FOUND IT, MAKING CERTAIN IT IS INVISIBLE FROM ALL ANGLES.

AVOID TRAMPLING PLANTS AND LEAVE NO TRACES OF YOUR VISIT, EVEN FOOTPRINTS.

I think the plan is to decide on what we want to say in this little header, and then C2B2 will tuck it somewhere in the blog sidebar for anyone to make use of. In your comments feel free to add/subtract as you see fit, keeping in mind that this particular item should be succinct, in the hope that new LBers will actually read it before they head out.

3 comments:

ahistory said...

One other item that was not mentioned at the meeting but I thought of later is to include something about the "leave no trace" ethic.
Something like:
PLEASE AVOID TRAMPLING PLANTS AND LEAVE NO TRACES OF YOUR VISIT BEHIND, EVEN FOOTPRINTS.

Monkey Mom said...

I also wanted to emphasize to "replace" the box as it was found not just to re-hide it. We all know what problems that can cause! I agree with ahistory about the leave no trace motto as well.

Jenny said...

Thanks, Ahistory and McMonkey Mom. I put in your changes.