"The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated."
- Mark Twain
Today was a good day. The route for work was a rare short one, and it finished in Burbank, allowing me to go on a hike that's been sitting on my back burner lately. I expected it to be a short uphill stint to check out the ruins of a building that burned down over forty years ago.
As a bonus, however, I also found a letterbox.
You see, I didn't expect the box to be there, since it's a retired listing on AtlasQuest. But I've spent a lot of time in the last year reading through retired listings on both letterboxing sites, looking for the ones that aren't "confirmed dead" by the planter. Usually they say something like they pulled the box for whatever reason or went to check on it and it was destroyed or missing. But sometimes they say that they got a report it was missing but don't live in the area, or otherwise only assume it is gone. Sometimes they don't say anything: the listing is retired, but the clue hasn't been updated at all.
So I've been going on a lot of wild goose chases. But why not? Usually the clue is still taking me to a cool location, which is really the point to boxing. If I also happen to find the box, that's just the cherry on top. I've confirmed a lot of things as dead, but I've also stumbled upon quite a few forgotten boxes: actual buried treasures.
Here's a list of boxes you should check out, forgotten but not gone:
I put in the dates I found them, most of them being the first time they were logged into in years. The first one I haven't actually found yet, but it was on my list before the last log confirmed my hunch. If you read the clue, it is a classic example of what I'm talking about (UPDATE: I finally sought it out in 2011 and Jabber let me adopt the box).
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