Rock Stashing

I've been thinking about rock stashing a bit more, and it almost embarrasses me to admit it, but the idea is kind of growing on me. The thing I really like about it is the one thing I like least about letterboxes--the logbooks, stamps, and plastic containers that often times end up becoming litter. More than once I've picked up battered up boxes, shredded Zip-Locks and pieces of logbooks from a destroyed box for proper disposal. Glad that at least that box wouldn't become a permanent source of litter cluttering up the environment because of letterboxing.

And I have to admit to feeling a bit annoyed at the occasional but regular posts about 'rehiding boxes better than you found it,' ruined logbooks, Lock-n-Locks sealed with the lid upside-down, etc. There are (understandably) a lot of emotions tied up in a letterbox, but I've heard it so many times before, it gets old. Rock stashing eliminates all those problems right out of the starting gate! Granted, rocks could still be stolen or go missing, but litter and ruined logbooks or stamps being traded out by geocachers--so many regular ongoing issues. Gone. Sounds kind of dreamy to me.

This afternoon, I walked around Alki beach, picking up some trash along the way, thinking about all the litter. Found a few Zip-Locks. I have no reason to suspect that any of them came from letterboxes, but what if they did? I'm sure some of my boxes--many planted in far-away locations that I may never visit again--will eventually become nothing more than trash. I pick up far more trash than I've ever left as 'litterboxes,' so I still feel good about leaving this planet better off than how I came into it--but I still feel that nagging doubt that some of my boxes could become litter.

So the more I think about rock stashing, the more the idea appeals to me. It's an idea that should be supported and cultivated. Originally I poo-pooed the idea since I didn't want to implement it myself, but realistically, it seems doubtful that anyone else would create the site that rock stashing needs.

So I find myself thinking about making a dedicated rock stashing website. Adding it as another 'type' of box on Atlas Quest would be far quicker and easier, but frankly, it urks my sense of order to add something completely unrelated to letterboxing to Atlas Quest. The concept is new and different enough to deserve a dedicated site of its own.

But that thought gives me a sense of dread. Running and maintaining two websites? Ugh! It wouldn't be so bad if I could reuse large amounts of code for both websites, so the message boards (for instance) would only need to be implemented once, and it would run message boards on both websites. I'd have to refactor a lot of existing code to make it work properly for multiple websites, but in theory, it could significantly reduce the duplicataion of effort between two such sites. And once the code is refactored to be reused across multiple websites, creating additional websites (if the time or inclination was there) would be significantly easier in the future.

So I find myself thinking about rock stashing. Thought I should at least find one, but I'm not actually sure there are any. I did a search for 'rock stashing' and the first link to come up was an article title Rock-stashing chimpanzee shows humanlike planning. Not really what I had in mind. Someone posted a message to the website at http://rockstashing.weebly.com/, but it seems to be focused on New England. (Those FAQs made me laugh, though.)

I've never painted a rock before, so I did some googling and found a plethora of information about painting rocks. Learn How to Paint Animals on Rocks has some amazing examples, but those looks rather intimidating. I'd probably want to start with something easier. =) I was pleased to see the comment about books containing "patterns that can be copied." I don't consider myself much of an artist, but I can copy and trace well enough.

But then I found these tutorials about rock painting:

Painting a Basket of Pansies
Written In Stone Project
Valentine Love Bugs Project
Stone Cactus Project

Those are pretty cool! And they actually look easy enough that I think I could do them. Ugh, I so did not need to learn about this hobby.....