There is a logbook under a bench in Provo, and you cannot read it from here.
Sidequest Season is a small collection of real places somebody walked to and
wrote down. At each one there is a Cairn — a logbook that opens only
while you are standing at the place itself.
That is the entire idea. Everything below is detail.
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.
Sealed · readable on siteNine minutes away
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
Pick somewhereEach place tells you how hard it is, how rough the ground is,
and roughly how long it takes. Choose accordingly.
Go thereWalk, ride, drive, whatever gets you there. Directions hand off to
your usual map app.
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.
Read what people leftSome of it will be from a stranger who stood exactly
where you are standing.
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 no app to install. It runs in the browser you already
have. No account, no password, no email address. You pick a name and a two-character mark the
first time you write something, and that is the whole of it.
About your location. The app asks for it, because it has to — that is the entire
mechanism. Here is what happens to it: your readings are used once, to decide whether you are
at the place, and are then thrown away. What gets stored is a rounded-off grid square, roughly
a hundred and fifty metres across. There is no live location, no history you can scroll, and no
way for anybody — including us, including your friends — to see where you have been
or where you are now. That is a design decision made early and on purpose, and it is the one
thing here we would refuse to trade.
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. We check that one before it publishes.
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, all walked in person by somebody who then wrote the description standing there. A place
cannot be published until somebody has actually been.
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.”