Have you ever searched for hidden treasure? Do you think that someone would hide a treasure and write a book and poem about a treasure chest and challenge you to find it? Could it be a hoax? What is someone found the answer to the riddle and it did not lead to gold and jewels? If so this is the place for you.
The Forrest Fenn aftermath has just jumped the shark. It was expected that there would be a plethora of solves and theories coming out after the announcement of discovery of the booty. However, I doubt that anyone would have anticipated the amount of conspiracy theories and speculation that has emerged.
Every show has a life cycle where there is an introduction, a build up of suspense and then a final act. However, sometimes when everything that could possibly be done to create new content for the characters has been exhausted. The creators roll out a series of scenes that deviate so far from the main theme of the show that they Jump the Shark.
Of course, this expression comes from the series Happy Days where Fonzie and the Cunninghams and the rest of the cast travel to California and Fonzie accepts a dare to Jump a Shark. In effect, the series Happy Days had nothing new.
And so it is with Forrest Fenn.
Laverne & Shirley and Mork & Mindy as well as three failures, Joanie Loves Chachi, Blansky’s Beauties and Out of the Blue. All came about as a result of the success of Happy Days.
And just like Happy Days we have spinoffs on Youtube with former cast members who all participated as searchers in the Thrill of the Chase.
Some of these youtubers have gained a modicum of success, while some have floundered. You remember Laverne and Shirley but how many can recall an episode of Joanie and Chachi.
So I think that we have seen some successful spin offs of the original Fenn Chase. And also some not so successful endeavors as well.
For me the original is the original and no new show is going to replace it. No matter how many attempts are made to re-write the characters and change the stories ending, the production gets shut down and the actors go on to play other parts in other series.
Henry Winkler, where are you now?
I just received my first instructions from the Ministry of Truth. It read, you must tell the truth but not all the truth. Only 85 percent of it needs to be true.
Some may recognize the inspiration of those words. But what 85 percent should be told? The fifteen percent might just be the part that leads to a block buster Netflix series. What lies below the surface may be more than 85 percent. And so the voices in my head continue to discuss the pros and cons of freeing myself from the chase. The same voices that have been speaking to me for years now.
Dedicating so much time and effort to one endeavor creates a void when what you believe is true is only a figment of imagination tethered to a stand of delusional truth and faith in the human species as one that is truthful and kind.
But what are the facts and who is the provider of these facts. And are they even true. Is any of it real? My inner demons are beginning to scream loudly. ” What the Fuck were you thinking?” My spirit replies. “It will all work out for you in the end.”
Yet, my soul remains mired down in the murkiness of a foggy night on a lonely road with ghosts and evil spirits clammoring for attention.
My only question left to the authority is, What must I do to be released from this nightmare?
Revisionist history is always more interesting than the real thing. At least that is what the book by George Orwell entitled 1984 led me to believe. This classically prescribed reading for 11th grade high school students taught me more about the world than I had learned in any of my previous 16 years of existence on the planet.
There should be a special place reserved for high school literature teachers that tack on a couple of years to their life for putting up with the snot nose know it all teenagers that enter their classroom and near illiterates. Run Spot Run, Tip and Mitten, Raggedy Anne and Andy, move over there is a mind that needs melding. Please allow the innocents of childhood to be replaced with real world ideas that may be useful for surviving yourself in the high school years and beyond.
Enter now the ministry of truth, the ministery of justice and introduce to me now the World and how it is shaped by mediocre aristocrats cloaked in a dark room behind a curtain of mind control. Let the thought police lead you in the direction of devine intervention and allow your most human of urges to be suppressed for the good of the community.
Looking through the Orwelian lense at The Community invovled in the Forrest Fenn aftermath, I wonder if I have now entered Oceania. As new streams of content are released daily into the vast openess created by such an innocuous ending, we are left doubting and questioning our own ability to think and create and exist with words that now have little or no meaning. Are we to be dumbed down into submission by the forces at work wanting Wintston Smith to depart from his own reality to that of the dark state?
In the state of Fenn, there is a single party system where only the Party rules with its leader. It broadcasts, manages and distributes information and control the people. Though the information is taken from history, it is rewritten to suit the current occasion. Even I have a hard time, thinking why the Facebook posting and Youtubing is punishable. The people are becoming unsure, and then sure that they are members of a great treasure quest. The goal of course is to ensure that everyone in the community accepts the same notions due to the subversion of information and rewriting of the history.
Lets not us be fooled by the authority and its group think.
Do you remember back to those magical days before Forrest Fenn announced the finding of the treasure chest?
I sure do. Mainly because of the power of delusional thinking. It was about the time the documentary was announced by one of the U-Tubers that had done an interview with Forrest Fenn and Douglas Preston that would form the nuclei of a documentary.
I was convinced that Forrest Fenn was leading up to a profound announcement of the treasure being found and the documentary would include an interview with Forrest and the lucky finder. Now this might sound a little crazy, but I actually thought Forrest had hired these documentarians and they would be contacting me for an interview.
So as the interview was broken into pieces and shown in sound bites on You Tube, I started to doubt that Forrest had intended for his interview to be broadcast in this manner and why he allowed the documentary was being parsed out the way it was in sound bites. But I was convinced that Forrest was behind it and that he would be contacting me for my story to add to the documentary.
Well, obviously, none of this happened. Forrest did not instruct them to get my story and no one came knocking at my door. But as a result, the sensationalism behind not releasing the interview as one piece only enraged the community because at the time, the treasure was still out there.
So the power of delusional thinking kept me engaged in thinking that the chest and fame and fortune were just within my reach. I expected that Janet Shamlian, Tony Dukopil and Gadi Schwartz would be knocking down my door for interviews and offers of television appearances. Meanwhile, Sothebys and other auction houses would be bringing offers to me for the box of antiquities.
But instead we now have an Onion spoof writer claiming ownership of the treasure chest.
At least I am no longer under the spell of delusional thinking.
What does it all add up to? A big nothing?
Now that more than nine months are in the rear view window since the announcement that Forrest Fenn made concerning the Thrill of the Chase treasure, what is the state of the chase?
There seems to be a group that have eagerly accepted that a man by the name of Jack has found the chest. These people accept that the chest is still in New Mexico and that Jack met with Forrest in an office in Santa Fe. Despite the fact that Jack has not provided a solution to the treasure hunt and the only evidence of his solve is three pictures of a partially full chest that may have some items that were shown on the cover of the book.
Another group appears to be skeptical of the information presented by Jack and have provided some character assessments of the finder and doubt the authenticity of his find. This line of thinking is being perpetuated in a number of different forums.
Yet even others believe that the chest was either never found, never available to be found or was retrieved by Forrest or his proxy. Some in this camp have even went so far as to suggest that Forrest Fenn is still alive.
For the most part, I have not made any public statements concerning these announcements and the developments that have come about after the announcement. Mainly because many of them are completely irrelevant to my experience and relationship with the Forrest Fenn treasure quest.
I have been following these developments and the court cases just to see what the aftermath would provide. Some of it has been a little disheartening while others have been heart warming. Each of us had our own “relationship” or lack of relationship with the creator of the hunt. What we treasure from that relationship is ours alone until it is shared with others. Choosing to remember that relationship as sacred and secret comes with a price of personal satisfaction in airing personal grievances concerning the interactions you had with Forrest.
At this point, I do not see anyone coming forward and saying they are completely satisfied with their interactions with Forrest now that he is gone and the opportunity to put their hands on a chest filled with gold and antiquities is no longer a possibility.
Forrest once said that if you had something nice to say about him, tell him now while he is alive. I think the same should be said about grievances they have with someone. Any critics should have confronted Forrest while he was alive. But they would not, fearing that perhaps if he was mad, he would not give them inside information or a secret hint. Mindy was courageous enough to present some information in 2017 that was critical of Forrest Fenn and he addressed her claims. Whether this was done out of spite or could have been done more tactfully, is certainly debatable.
The last time I interacted with Forrest at Fennborree 2019, he was not giving me or anyone else hints that would have led to the discovery of his treasure. He was telling me and Silver Fox about a German railway. (it was a word for word story he had written before, but he was leaving out some of the details.) However, I did notice that there had been a gradual decline in his ability to deflect, defend and to ward off the attempts to extract information from him.
So what is the point of writing this today. Well, I just reviewed the nine or ten emails that I sent to Forrest Fenn over the past 8 years and I noticed that I was engaged in the same behavior of badgering the man just like many others. My emails were very infrequent and there were years where I did not send a single message. While I did not ask any specific questions in my email. It appears that I was hoping to find confirmation for my ideas, which I think was equally obtrusive and dangerous. While at the time, I thought those emails were appropriate, in hind sight they were aimed at getting an advantage. Yet not one of his one sentence replies provided any useful information.
For the most part, my interactions with Forrest Fenn swung from admiration and adornment to disgust and disappointment depending on whether I felt I was getting any closer to solving the treasure hunt. I can imagine that any one truly invested in this quest had the same experience.
Do I have some things that I would like to get off my chest? Sure I do. But sharing them with others is not going to bring back Forrest or assist in discovering the the location where the treasure was secreted. Nor is it going to help the remaining family members, who have suffered a greater loss than any of us.
As a side note, I am not a very good person when it comes to personal interactions with others. So please do not judge my comments as a negative reflection on Forrest Fenn.
Each of us has our own personal account and when we add up the sum of what we have it should not be less than what we gave. I can understand that many of us feel that the accountants have failed to post our contributions to the balance sheet. But there is always a line for past due accounts that one one persons books it shown as an accounts receivable on anothers. In the the end the books are balanced.
Looks like I have a couple of hours to do some Fenning, so I thought that I would present the Wyoming Treasure solve location. Please do not get wrapped up in knit picking the solve just accept it for what it is. Mostly relying on the poem, my Wyoming solve was based on the idea that Forrest went where his fantasies played along the creeks and rivers.
As I have gone alone in there
And with my treasures bold,
I can keep my secret where,
And hint of riches new and old.
The poem begins with the first stanza giving a starting point for finding the path to the treasure spot. Treasures bold refers to Boulder Ridge in Wyoming which is the starting point for the waters which halt.
The hint of riches new and old refers to one of the creeks. Aldrich Creek.(Riches)
Begin it where warm waters halt
And take it in the canyon down,
Not far, but too far to walk.
Put in below the home of Brown.
The second stanza tells you what to do from Boulder Ridge. Take it in the Canyon. Therefore we must look at the canyons that come off of Boulder Ridge. The waters halt as they back up into the many rivulets that come from Boulder Ridge. These include: Sheepeater Creek, Boulder Creek, Hunter Creek, Castle Creek, School House Creek, Crane Creek, Jordan Creek, Corral Creek, Rock Creek,(West, Middle, East), Belknap Creek, Bull Creek, Lily Creek, Sheep Creek, Carter Creek. Sage Creek, Hoodoo Creek, Meeteetsee Creek, and in the lower Basin Eleanor Creek.
Too far to walk means that you need to travel by water route.
Put in below the home of Brown tells you to take a water tributary. But which one. The next stanza narrows this down.
The Brown refers to Brown Thomas Meadow Ranch.
We now know that the Put In creek is below Brown Thomas Ranch.
From there it’s no place for the meek,
The end is ever drawing nigh;
There’ll be no paddle up your creek,
Just heavy loads and water high.
The no place for the meek spot is Hunter Creek, Which is below the Brown Thomas Ranch.
The heavy loads again refers to Boulder Creek and the Water High is at the inlet to Sheepeater creek.
The no paddle up your creek spot now tells you that you no longer need to refer to water routes. Because you are at the end of a creek which is the beginning of a creek..This basin has numberous creek terminations again a water halting spot. You now need to look for transportation land routes.
If you’ve been wise and found the blaze,
Look quickly down, your quest to cease,
But tarry scant with marvel gaze,
Just take the chest and go in peace.
The next stanzas give you the land route or the blaze required to find the chest. The land route is Southfork Road. Once you get to the y wise at the end of Southfork Road (6wx Road). to Cabin Creek.
The remainder will remain a mystery to me and you.
So why is it that I must go
And leave my trove for all to seek?
The answers I already know,
I’ve done it tired, and now I’m weak.
So hear me all and listen good,
Your effort will be worth the cold.
If you are brave and in the wood
There were many people who are legends around these parts. One of them is Oliver Haag. Oliver was well known for being frugal but generous. If you had an old car that you wanted towed off, he would come get it and park it on his homestead. He took almost everything.
Unfortunately, when he passed away with no direct descendents, the administrators of his estate were in charge of liquidating the assets and cleaning up the property. Unfortunately, Oliver did not keep titles to the old vehicles that he had acquired, the administrators decided not to spend the time doing quiet titles but rather decided to crush the cars and trucks for scrap.
Now, you must realize that many of these were classics and antiques dating back to the 30’s, 40’s, 50’s and 60’s. The value of the lot to the collector community was probably 100 times what the iron buyers were paying.
As the mobile crusher pulled in, a group of collectors gathered to plead for the cars to be saved and restored. These pleas fell on deaf ears and one by one the cars were reduced to a 10 by 10 by six chunk of steel.
Many of us cried as the semi truck hauling the crushed cars left. As a car enthusiast who has spent days and weeks tracking down that one missing part or the last of a limited run of NOS (new old stock) parts. Those administrators did not realize how much they had destroyed in such a short amount of time.
Sometimes it comes down to a simple choice between preserving something of value or making a quick buck.
This is the final post on this blog. I will leave this content up until December 4th. Then it will be removed and archived. Unfortunately, the Thrill of the Chase drama needs to be removed from my daily routine. I feel that I am bordering on insanity buy spending too much time on this.
What started out in 2013 as a treasure quest and hobby has now turned into something that I never anticipated it would become. Perhaps I had too high of expectations in terms of a final outcome and the participants involved.
When I first started, this was a little known book sitting on the shelf in a Santa Fe bookstore. Then it became a national phenomenon after the Today show featured it on morning television. Now it has morphed into a YouTube sensation.
My format no longer meets the current business model of The Thrill of the Chase. No one seems to be interested in reading and commenting on what I have to say. Moreover, there is not much more that I can add to the story.
As I sit here in front of my computer, I do so with many good thoughts of some BOTG and reflect on many of the research topics that I explored as a part of searching for this elusive treasure. But there are so many unsettling forces at work now. What was for me a “gentleman’s game”, has turned into a free for all with no apparent rules and excess drama.
Over the years, I have arrived at two very solid possibilities for success in retrieving the Forrest Fenn Bonanza. One is a small scale solution and the other is a big picture solve. Both lead to the same final resting place. I am going to take the next four months to consider my lot in life and decide if I should pursue this any further.
In the last ten years we have heard story after story of adventure and exploration. To collect them all would take a volume set greater than John Francis Cambell’s collection of Popular Tales of the West Highlands. Which in its final stanza proclaims that every story must have a beginning, middle and an end.
End.
Here is a painting that I call “Pacific Coast”
This was painted more than 30 years ago, but is still very comforting to look at. I gave it to my mother and father for Christmas in 1987. I was home for Thanksgiving and snapped a quick picture in between bites of Turkey and stuffing.
Here is another one that I painted. I call it “Mountain Gaze”
This one is named “Fall Creek”
My dad never said much about my artwork, if anything. My mom still has them hanging on the wall. So I guess they are not that bad. Maybe I should pick up a brush and get back to it. What do you think?
Hope everyone is having a nice black Friday. Sometimes I go out and battle the crowds to see what bargains I can find. Today I found a good deal on some game cameras and a couple of ramps to load a four wheeler on my trailer or in the back of the pickup. They are the trifold type that fold up for easy storage.
The game cameras were about 40 dollars each and included a video card and batteries. I got four of them so I can hopefully catch the guy that keeps breaking into my school building and stealing stuff from our machine shed.
In 1989, I went out black Friday shopping and bought some turquios earing for my girlfriend. In retrospect, they were really gaudy looking and if pressed on the issue, I would say that they probably resulted in our subsequent breakup. I learned that if you are shopping for jewelry, its best to have your partner with you.
I like turquios color and I have spent some time looking for it and also researched the history and uses of turquois. Some others in the community know the history of turquoise better than I do. So there is probably no need to go into any more details about it.
I bought this little nugget a while back because I thought it looked like an alligator. Of course I am always seeing things that aren’t there.
endofthechase 
You must be logged in to post a comment.