Get Outside and Learn to Letterbox

Lucy Meigs is the Mother Nature of Middlesex County and wants us all out of the house. The nature lover is the brain behind Everyone Outside, a program that encourages people of all ages to enjoy the natural world and explore the outdoors.

Everyone Outside is sponsoring a Letterbox Challenge and offering two Learn about Letterboxing sessions – one on Monday, June 27 from 10 a.m. until noon at Levi Coe Library and the other on Thursday, June 30 from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. at the Durham Farmers' Market. Both events are free and you can drop by at any point during the sessions.

Letterboxing, explains Meigs, is similar to geocaching, “except that there are no trinkets. There are just stamps there and you put a stamp from the letterbox in your notebook.”

Atlas Quest, a letterboxing community found online, describes the activity as, "an intriguing pastime combining artistic ability with 'treasure-hunts' in parks, forests, and cities around the world. Participants seek out hidden letterboxes by cracking codes and following clues."

Letterboxers, explains the site, "stamp their discoveries in a personal journal, then use their own rubber stamp, called a signature stamp, by stamping it into the logbook found with the letterbox, perhaps writing a note about the weather or their adventures in finding the letterbox."

Through Everyone Outside's Letterbox Challenge, local businesses are giving prizes for every five letterboxes a participant finds on a walk. Prizes range from gelato to smoothies and crepes to a free membership to the Connecticut Forest & Park Association. 

According to the rules of the challenge, one must walk in the woods to find letterboxes. The rules state: "you must walk at least 10 minutes to get to the letterbox or hike on further as part of your outing (no letterboxes in businesses). For each sheet, no more than two letterboxes may be from the same walk."

Once the participant has found five letterboxes, they bring their letterbox notebook and the Letterbox Challenge Form to the Durham, Middlefield or Middletown library to obtain a prize. 

The goal of Everyone Outside, Meigs explains, “is to get as many people outside enjoying nature as I can.

"The Letterboxing Challenge is just a fun way to get people outside because it’s a fun challenge.” 

Meigs, who has a Ph.D. in geology as well as an extensive background in science says, “I certainly believe that the only way we’re going to create conservation is if people want to protect the natural world. To do so, people need to have a personal connection. If they don’t have a personal connection, they aren’t going to care enough to speak up and save the natural spaces near them, so I try to get more people out there really enjoying nature.” 

Today's kids "are just so plugged in. They don’t get what I got when I was a kid,” Meigs points out. “When I was a kid I just went on my own and nobody minded. I’d be back for dinner. This just doesn’t happen anymore. Kids are not allowed to have free reign.

“A lot of parents (because of ticks and other things) are paranoid about their kids going into the woods. We’re losing that connection and all of those stress relief benefits of nature," she adds.

Meigs has received several grants to help fund her outdoor education work. Coginchaug Valley Education Foundation awarded Durham Recreation a small grant, which provided the start of both Everyone Outside and the Letterbox Challenge. Meigs' current and more major source of funding for the website, curriculum and field trips comes from the Rockfall Foundation in Middletown. 

She started plugging letterboxing last summer but “didn’t really get it going because people had gotten into summer. I had a few people but not a lot.”

In the last year she has been involved in more education programs and has been able to spread the word about letterboxing so that more people are interested.

“I think it will be a good, fun program this summer,” she says.

Meigs has been hiking and backpacking since her days as a camper. “I have a passion for the natural world and started leading hikes at camp as a kid.”

When her first daughter (now a teenager) was born, “sort of out of desperation to find people to spend time with outside while I was a stay at home mom for six months, I just started leading hikes,” Meigs said.

When the kids started walking, they became “sort of kid hikes and it just gradually evolved.”  

Now, she offers hikes for individuals, families and women. 

If you are interested in participating in the Letterboxing Challenge, forms can be found online, Patch.com (through the photos portion of this article), as well as the Durham, Middlefield and Middletown libraries. 

For additional information on Meigs’ programs, please visit EveryoneOutside.org and WomenOfTheWoods.org.

To learn more about letterboxing visit LetterBoxing.org and AtlasQuest.com.

The Everyone Outside Program is funded in part by a grants from the Rockfall Foundation and the Cognichaug Valley Education Foundation. Additional sponsors of the program are the Connecticut Forest & Park Association, Durham Recreation, Ellington Printery, The Durham Healthmart Pharmacy, Deerfield Farm, Perk on Main, the Durham Public Library, the Levi Coe Library and the Russell Library, in Middletown.