ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on a research-creation project that took place along St. Cuthbert's Way on the border of England and Scotland. St. Cuthbert's Way is a public walk that runs from Melrose, Scotland to Lindisfarne, England along the border, and across gently rolling mountains, through tiny villages, and through the top end of the windswept Pennines. It tracks the path of 7th-century monk, St. Cuthbert. The project was inspired by the tradition of Letterboxing from the 19th century. Letterboxing was a precursor to geocaching and originally took the form of people leaving writings addressed to themselves in hidden places on specific walks in Dartmoor. Other walkers would find the postcards and hopefully post them back to the people who wrote them and left them on the moor, hence the name Letterboxing. My research-creation project had two components: to leave self-addressed and stamped postcards for other walkers to find and inscribe and post back to me. As well as write postcards to myself to read later. Both postcard projects were theoretically inspired by Derrida's envois that perform an ontology of non-arrival and are theorized in this chapter using queer theory in conversation with Derrida's idea of hospitality, and absent-presences.
