There is a logbook under a bench in Provo, and you cannot read it from here.

The rule

Whatever people have written at a place stays at that place. Not blurred, not previewed, not unlockable early. You walk there, your phone confirms you are actually there, and the book opens. You walk away and it shuts.

There is no paywall here and nothing to unlock. It is a notebook in a box under a bench, and boxes under benches do not have unlock buttons. The distance is the only thing in your way, and the distance is just a fact about the world.

How it actually goes

1. Pick somewhereEach place tells you how hard it is, how rough the ground is, and roughly how long it takes. Choose accordingly.
2. Go thereWalk, ride, drive, whatever gets you there. Directions hand off to your usual map app.
3. Stand still for about forty-five secondsYour phone collects a few position readings and the server decides whether you have arrived. It is not generous about this.
4. Read what people leftSome of it will be from a stranger who stood exactly where you are standing.
5. Leave something, if you want to280 characters. It cannot be edited or deleted afterwards, which is exactly why the old ones are worth reading.

What it costs

Nothing, and there is nothing to install. It runs in the browser you already have.

To walk to a place and sign its log, you need no account at all. You pick a name and a two-character mark the first time you write something, and that is the whole of it.

If you later want to add places of your own, that is the one point where we'll need a way to reach you. Somebody who publishes a location other people will drive to should be reachable — if a place gets closed, or a landowner asks for it to come down, we need to be able to tell you.

Three numbers, honestly

Every place carries the same three, because one difficulty score always hides the thing somebody actually needed to know.

Challenge

How hard it is to work out. Some anchors take finding.

Terrain

How rough the ground is. A 1 is a promise: firm, level, step-free. It is made by the first person who stood there and put their name on it, and it is theirs, not ours.

Time

Under fifteen minutes, through to all day.

How small this is

This is the first edition and it is tiny. A handful of places, all in Utah County. Some were walked in person by somebody who wrote the description standing there. The rest came off a map and nobody has been yet — those are marked Sighted, and they carry no terrain rating at all until somebody walks one in.

So there may be very little to see today, and some Cairns will be empty when you reach them. If yours is the first entry at a place, that is not a bug — that is the good one to get.

“The world is already interesting; you're not required to decorate it.”

The standing rule

Bring a jacket. The canyon is colder than the valley.

Want to add places of your own? That takes an invite, and they are handed out one at a time by somebody who reads every request. Reading the board and signing a log needs none of that — walk to any of the ten and the book opens.

Optional: Share, then Add to Home Screen. It opens without the browser bars, which matters when you are one-handed in sunlight.

Ask to be let in

An address, and one line about who you are. A person reads it. Nothing is sent to you automatically, and not every request gets an invite.