← the goods EDITION 01 · FIRST FROST · AUTUMN 2026
sightings.squatch.cc/e01 · field report one

First Frost

Edition 01 is the autumn one. Six pages are hidden out past the last fence, each one named by the answer to the page before it, and each one carrying a stamp code you copy into a book of your own. When you have all six, the first letters of them spell a word, and that word is an address too.

One word before you start: there is nothing to click anywhere in this edition, and there is nothing to win by being quick. Six people who finished this on the same evening all get the same thing, and so does the six hundredth person.

Here is the report, and then there is the first clue.

The fourteenth. The wind came round to the north in the evening and by dark it was steady, the kind that finds every gap in the fence line and works at it. We put the truck in the barn on the strength of it, which is a thing you do twice a season out here and enjoy both times.

Two in the morning. Thirty-one degrees at the gauge by the porch, and the creek that has been running warm since August had a skin on it you could stand on and hear through. The gauge does not read thirty-one out of politeness. The dew on the grass above the creek had frozen, and where the wind cannot reach — the lee of the fence, the inside of the truck bed, the rail above the switch — there was a white feathering on the metal thick enough to read a boot print in.

Morning. Cold enough that the pump would not prime, which is not weather so much as the whole month arriving at once. Down at the spring the water was still forty-seven degrees, which never changes: cold air, warm rock. The horses stood in the lane and would not go up the hill for the better part of the morning, and this is the correct decision.

What was actually there. Everything the woods does first, it did that week, and all at once instead of in order. One tree over the spring went scarlet in a single night while the tree beside it stayed green, then dropped every leaf it had left in one windy morning and left the ground white under it. Persimmons went soft on the branch and came down. The cedars went from green to that flat dusty green they turn before anybody believes they have turned at all.

And the reason this edition exists: something came down out of the sky on the night of the fourteenth and lay along the grass and the fence wire, and did not melt. It hardened. And in the morning it was gone, without ever having been anywhere.

House rules, in full — for the suspicious, the careful, and anybody who has been let down by a treasure map before.

House rules
THE ADDRESSEvery answer is one lowercase word, no spaces and no hyphens. It becomes a folder name, so it has to be the kind of word you can shout across a creek.
WRONG TURNSA wrong answer gets you a 404 and that is all of it. Nothing is recorded, nothing is sent anywhere, there is no account and there is no way to fail this permanently. Walk back to the front of the edition and say the word out loud.
WHAT IS WAITINGSix stamps, six letters, one word — and then a page that congratulates you and a certificate you can print. Every single person who gets there gets the same. No draw, no first fifty, no code to redeem, and nothing better for being quick.
YOUR OWN BOOKThe logbook is paper and it is yours. We store nothing, we count nothing, we have no idea whether you finished, and we could not find out if we wanted to. Six codes go in the book and the book goes in a drawer, which is all the record-keeping there is.
WHO IT IS FORAnybody. A curious kid with a nudge, a grown-up who likes a good story, a granddad who already knows every answer on this site. It is unhurried on purpose.
IF YOU GET STUCKThe nudge under the arrow, on every clue page, three deep and never a cheat. Then a letter to us and one of us will walk it with you.
Hoar frost on a window at night A window at night in four panes. Pale feathery ice grows in from all four corners of the glass and spreads toward the middle in fine branching fronds, leaving the centre of each pane clear. Outside the window is a dark blue creek bottom with a treeline on the far bank and the last of the leaves down. A thermometer leans on the sill. 31 04:12 · THE BACK ROOM GAUGE BY THE PORCH: 31 ICE GROWS FROM THE COLDEST EDGE INWARD · IT IS NOT A PLANT
Plate one. The back room, twenty past four, the gauge by the porch reading thirty-one.
Clue one · the porch light
The creek was warm on Monday and the creek is not warm today.
Something came down out of the sky in the night and lay along the grass and the fence wire, and it did not melt, it hardened.
It leaves no print and no mark you can see in the morning. It is thinner than paper and it will still be thinner than paper in the morning.
It only ever comes on a clear night with nothing much moving in the air, and every person in this county got up and looked at it before breakfast.

What is it? One lowercase word, and it is where you go next.

Need a nudge?

It is not the ice on the creek and it is not snow, because it never came from a cloud. It is water that changed its mind, and the word for the whole process is the same word you would use for the white stuff on the windshield.

Every clear, still night, when the ground and the grass and the wire are colder than the air above them, that is this. If you want a number: it happens at thirty-two degrees Fahrenheit and below, and people call the result by a short word, and that short word is the name this whole edition is about.

Read the second line again. Somebody said it hardened. The verb is to frost, and the thin white version with feathers in it is called hoarfrost, which is a longer word than the one the address wants.