How to create your Valley Voyages Quest
(base structure from http://www.vitalcommunities.org/valleyquest/howto.htm)
- Pick a spot that is a special place for you. Perhaps a unique natural or cultural feature of your town.
- Make sure the spot connects in some way to local history, or history of the Valley, or on the theme of People of the Valley that we’ve been discussing.
- Find out who owns or manages this property and request permission to make a Quest there.
- We may be able to help you with this, or if you have problems with gaining permission, or making a decision as to if you need permission at all, for example on public property.
- Make a few trips to the site to uncover its details, and to begin to think about the best approaches to making a Quest on your site.
- Making a great Quest will take some time. Do not expect to be able to finish creating a Quest from start to finish in a day. This is a multi-stage project.
- Find people in your community who can teach you more about your site -community elders, members of your towns historical society or conservation commission. Invite them to take a trip out on the land with you.
- You should plan on contacting someone to help you with background information, or to access written records about the site in some way.
- Take good notes!
- Decide on your Quest strategy: a detailed map Quest; a map-less Quest; a jumble Quest (collecting words); a pict-o-Quest (no words-only following pictures!). Or any combination. Use your imagination and creativity-it’s up to you!
- For our purposes, you will create a map along with your quest, so make sure to plan for that when researching the site, and when taking notes.
- Draw rough maps of your site. Also sketch or note the unique features that would make good clues.
- Take a look at some examples of Quests to get an idea of what the maps look like – they do not have to be of professional quality, but, they should accurately describe the place, and someone should be able to follow the map easily in order to make their way around.
- Make a rough draft of your Quest Map.
- Your final map can be hand-drawn, as we will scan it in to make an electronic record for publishing purposes.
- Write / Compose a rough draft of your riddles or accompanying text.
- You will need two types of clues, movement clues, and content clues. See examples for how these are used on the Park Quests in CVNP.
- Test your Quest with as many different people as you can get to try it out – and make appropriate changes.
- Troubleshooting your Quest is key to success! Ask a group of friends to come with you, and have them tell you what they think, work out all the problems, etc.
- Create a written description of what makes the site special. This should come from your research and should only be a few paragraphs long. You can focus on whatever you think visitors to the site will be most interested in. Depending on the site, possible things to write about include: the historical significance of the site to the town; a true story about something that once happened at the site; the natural history of the site–trees to look for, special rocks, plantings, etc.; why people in your town love this site so much; fun or interesting things to do; amazing-but-true trivia facts about the site (height of steeple, age of building, number of orchid species, number of granite blocks and where they came from, etc.)
- Draw final Quest Map.
- Design a logo for the stamp for the site and carve it into a plastic eraser or make a stamp out of rubber and wood.
- Get a waterproof box to use as a Quest Box. Waterproof the introduction to the site and attach it securely to the inside cover of the box. Place in the box: a log book; pencil/pen; stamp; ink pad; pencil sharpener.
- Hide the box.
- Make sure you have someone adopt the box for long-term monitoring.
