A prominent feature on the terrain that can be easily recognized and used to orient oneself.

This is an advanced carving and stamping technique where multiple stamps are colored then stamped directly on top of each other to form a single image. As a general rule, you stamp the lightest colors first then use darker colors to overlap the lighter colors. There’s a little information about layered stamps in the Stamping With Style tutorial.

Short for Letterboxing North America, the granddaddy of letterboxing websites in the United States.

A stretch of terrain that must be navigated between two checkpoints. Also called a route.

When a discussion gets discussed to death on the talk list, many people would say that further discussion is beating a dead horse. After beating dead horses for extended periods of times, that gets boring too so the discussion drifted to beating dead lemurs, or at least ones that were mostly dead and not really moving anymore, or perhaps even suicidal. Also see dead kittens and dead gerbils.

A letterbox hidden inside of a hollowed-out book, usually planted in libraries or bookstores.

An offshoot of Artist Trading Cards (ATC), which itself is an offshoot of traditional trading cards such as baseball cards. Standard LTCs are 2.5"x3.5", or 64x89mm, with a base that has the thickness and consistency of card stock, and use stamped images as part of the requirement. Most LTCs typically incorporate the creator’s signature stamp in some way. More information can be found in the help pages in the Letterboxer Trading Cards category.

Short for letterboxing podcast, it’s like an Internet radio show for letterboxers.

A popular type of container used for letterboxes.

Logbooks are journals that are used to record found and planted letterboxes. Each letterboxer has their own, personal logbook used to record boxes they’ve found, and each letterbox has a logbook to record all of the people who’ve found it.

Someone who reads message boards or other conversations but doesn’t actually participate in the discussions.

Infected deer ticks spread Lyme disease to the tune of 23,000 people in 2002. It is a problem, but most people can be successfully treated if detected early. The risk is significantly higher in the northeastern states, but most other parts of the United States have some degree of risk as well. For the definitive source about symptoms, preventative measures, and treatment of Lyme disease, visit the CDC Lyme Disease webpage.