When I accidentally stumbled across a website about letterboxing back in 2002, I was so excited that I immediately went out and bought a carving tool and a pack of erasers. I made two stamps. The first stamp was to be planted in honor of my father-in-law who passed away about a year before. The second was my signature stamp which I still use today.

I had never seen a letterbox in real life when I planted my first couple of letterboxes. I didn't find my first find for another six weeks. It was one of the earliest letterboxes in TN and was carved out of wood. I began a long tradition of accidentally stamping upside-down. (I have skills, people.)

Having planted that first letterbox without ever seeing one, I am surprised that my first letterbox is still available. ( https://www.atlasquest.com/boxes/clue/?boxId=31581 ). Its survival is thanks to all the care from other Tennessee letterboxers over the years and a little mercy from Chaos. I still don't know why some letterboxes survive and others do not.

We're headed back to Tennessee later this week. So much has changed in my life since I planted that first letterbox, and yet it really hasn't. I still find letterboxing to be magical. <3

Honeypot and I will be driving through TN on the 15th and 16th next week. We may have this one on our list to get. :-)

That is very cool
Thanks for sharing.

Good to hear from you, Quiet Place! I haven't been back to Bristol since my mom died, 2 years ago. I never did get this box. But I do have several of yours. I need to get back to TN for a visit, but it won't be this week. Take care!

I still don't know why some letterboxes survive and others do not.

I'm guessing the primary cause of boxes going missing is inconsiderate boxers eating lunch or on the trail and then finding them. Trail mix, food smell, animal, gone. If true, one would expect a correlation between ease of getting a box, and it going missing.

Why some more than others? What's on top of it? Unless its a big rock, whatever is on top will rot or is easily moved by animals. I've seen some covered with thin layers of bark or twigs. I'm surprised these last more than a month, but some do. The OP is right, who knows?

This would be a great Friday Distraction question. Wish I had thought of it. Well, it can be a Monday Distraction. I get more work done on Fridays than Mondays anyway.

As an aside, this would make a great science experiment if some high school kid needs one. Perfect chance to apply the scientific method, set up controls and all that stuff, and prove you know the distinction between causation and correlation and speculation, and all that good science stuff. You'd get an A, plus it would be fun, plus it would be great fodder for those college essays.

Thinking back to when I wrote one of my college essays about a certain box of yours with lots of ???s...

I still don't know why some letterboxes survive and others do not.

I blame God for the disappearance of some of my boxes. I planted one under a huge granite monolith out in the boonies where it had been since time immemorial. Next time I check, the rock is a jumble of smaller boulders. Seems like He (in King James parlance) would have more important things to tend to.

I blame God for the disappearance of some of my boxes

Maybe it's the the other guy, seems more like his work.

And yet I have found letterboxes which have obviously been out of their hiding spots, out in the open, for months if not years and they're just fine.

I do now try to bring along bricks or rocks to hold my boxes down if I can't find anything nearby. I think that helps. But there seems to be no guarantees with that, either. I've seen one box that was crushed because people were stepping on the rock that was covering it (maybe while looking for it or a geocache?). So, I think the universe is truly chaos and we're just trying our best to make it behave, and mostly failing at it.

I blame God for the disappearance of some of my boxes

Maybe it's the the other guy, seems more like his work.

Eevil?

That happened to me, too! You may be on to something.

Eevil?

So, he ist zhe Kim Jong-un.

The box that has the best chance of staying put, IMO, meets all of the following:

1. Is away from main traffic areas. If something is right along a main trail or very close to it, there's a good chance someone or someone's dog will stumble upon it accidentally. Even away from a main trail isn't good enough if there is evidence that it's a drinking hangout.

2. Is not in a location easily visible. A hiding spot might technically be away from traffic distance-wise, but may still be in a very visible, open area.

3. Is under a heavy rock or something else hiding it. A rock is less conspicuous than a pile of sticks or leaves and is less prone to being disturbed by rain or wind.

4. Is in a good-sized container. Once I went to find a series planted by newbies. Although their 'boxes' weren't in plain site, they were planted just in plastic bags. People forget that critters love to investigate plastic and I found shredded bags and nothing else. Ironically one of the missing ones was a stamp of a mouse (clicks, not tails). :) Even Sir Braemoor has been guilty of this. One of his boxes that went missing had been planted in a film container. There was lots of evidence of chipmunks in the area (stashes of acorns) so I'm pretty sure it was carried away by a critter, even though it was under a large rock.

My ideal box is something that is in a hole under a rock, where the rock extends past the hole so that the heavy rock is not resting on the plastic lid, but still shelters the box from rain. Even better if the hole was filled with a few inches of gravel first to prevent water from collecting and floating the box.

1. Is away from main traffic areas. If something is right along a main trail or very close to it, there's a good chance someone or someone's dog will stumble upon it accidentally.

Don't forget that people like to leave the trail when they need to pee. They usually leave the trail by a prescribed distance to an inviting tree. If you chose to plant your box under that tree, it's likely to be noticed when someone's pee makes that sound of bouncing off plastic.

3. Is under a heavy rock or something else hiding it. A rock is less conspicuous than a pile of sticks or leaves and is less prone to being disturbed by rain or wind.

In most areas of the world, perhaps. Here in Florida, nothing is more conspicuous than a rock! They are so few and far between that a passerby would likely pick one up to investigate it. Here the trick to a successful hide is to figure out where leaves tend to gather, in the crotch of a multi-trunk tree for example, and plant there so that the hide tends to collect more cover with time rather than the cover being blown off. The downside is that the next planter may have to dig quite a ways through the leaf litter to get to the box, but at least it won't go missing.

Here are my first five boxes measured against this standard. My first two plants are fine, while my next three have gone missing.

1. Is away from main traffic areas.

1) Within 10 feet of a major trail that gets a lot of traffic.
2) In a park next to the Riverdale City Hall, but well away from where people go.
3) Up a mountain, well off of a trail.
4) In the outside display (of trains) as a train museum.
5) Next to a river close to the same city hall.

2. Is not in a location easily visible.

1-5) Check

3. Is under a heavy rock or something else hiding it.

1) In a hole under a partially rotten log, and in a tangle of twigs by a tree.
2) Stuck in a hole in a collection of boulders.
3) Under a single, tent-shaped rock with smaller rocks covering the opening.
4) The undercarriage of one of the train cars.
5) Stuck in a hole in boulders along the bank of the river.

4. Is in a good-sized container.

1-5) Check

Postmortem:
1) Still hidden well.
2) Ditto.
3) Destroyed by a wildfire. I should have chosen a place with no vegetation.
4) I think that it fell off of the undercarriage. I should have used magnets and it would probably still be hidden today.
5) I have no idea why this one went missing. It was weighted down by a rock so I don't think that it was the river. I suspect that it was found by junior muggles. (I have found a geocache downstream on this very same river that definitely gets flooded every year and the rock on top of it has saved it.)

Overview: While your guidelines are very good, they are not absolute. #2 complies with everything, but so did #5. (Maybe muggles were playing along the river.) And when hiding it up inside of something, be sure to use magnets.

Even Sir Braemoor has been guilty of this. One of his boxes that went missing had been planted in a film container. There was lots of evidence of chipmunks in the area (stashes of acorns) so I'm pretty sure it was carried away by a critter, even though it was under a large rock.

Maybe you should plant more than _two_ boxes in the past 18 years before calling out other specific planters on specific boxes and how they plant. Ya know, _planting two, finding over 1000_, sounds a bit selfish to me. That's fine, but don't call out specific planters out until you've planted a few more yourself for the rest of us to find. Maybe then you would actually understand how hard it is.

Oh, and how exactly do you know it went missing? Cuz u didn't find it.

Oh, and if chipmunks allegedly dug it out from under a large rock, based on stashes of acorns nearby, why didn't they stash it with the other acorns? Do chipmunks actually dig under large rocks for acorns? When an acorn falls in the forest, does it land under a large rock, which is why chipmunks have evolved this peculiar skill?

I don't know. It all sounds so speculative to me, but I suppose I'm guilty just the same. But next time, plant a few hundred boxes yourself before calling out other specific planters. Make sense?

Not calling anyone out at all, and didn't mean to offend. I didn't mean to criticize your planting methods. In fact, I think you're one of best planters around. Your boxes tend to remain undisturbed for decades, which not many people can say.

You can sometimes see patterns by finding boxes even without planting many. I haven't found that many of yours, but this is the only one I've looked for that a) disappeared (which you confirmed, btw), and b) was planted in a very small container. That combined with all the chipmunk tunnels I found in that same spot as I was searching for it led me to the conclusion that a chipmunk got into it.

Again, it was not meant to be a criticism of your planting methods. It was more "this was one box that went missing and this may have been the cause."

I find that 99% of the missing boxes are placed in very poor areas, like very visible to passersby or in party areas. Your boxes never are. They're always off the beaten path and very highly concealed under a rock or something similar, not under a suspicious pile of something.

I apologize if this came off as critical; it really wasn't meant to be. Actually, "Even Sir Braemoor has been guilty of this" is more of a testament to what a fantastic planter you are. It says that one of your boxes going missing is a very rare occurrence.

You're the last person in the world I would want to offend, and I'm sorry.