{"id":4751,"date":"2017-08-30T15:52:19","date_gmt":"2017-08-30T05:52:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sommermelse.com\/blog\/?p=4751"},"modified":"2017-08-30T15:52:19","modified_gmt":"2017-08-30T05:52:19","slug":"finding-wonder-69-of-100","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sommermelse.com\/blog\/finding-wonder-69-of-100\/","title":{"rendered":"Finding Wonder 69 of 100"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"69_finding_wonder_fenns_treasure_colorado\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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Stumbled across the following story and it made me shake my head in amused wonderment. Forrest Fenn is an eccentric genius. An 80 year old multi-millionaire arts dealer, Forrest hid a treasure chest somewhere in the Rocky Mountains sometime during 2009 and left the clues in a poem in his autobiography “The Thrill of The Chase”. His reasoning? He hid the box in the midst of the Great Recession to cheer folks up and to get them off their couches and into the great outdoors. There are now 1000’s out searching to this day so I think it’s safe to say his idea worked. 99.9% of people won’t find “the” treasure….but somehow I think 99.9% of those same people have stumbled upon the treasure and wonder of the great outdoors and adventure.<\/p>\n

Love that this man Forrest Fenn has created wonder for so many people!!<\/p>\n

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Clues to $2M buried treasure hidden in art dealer\u2019s poem<\/h1>\n
FERNANDA SANTOS<\/a><\/div>\n
The New York Times<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n
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Forrest Fenn, a successful Santa Fe art dealer whose self-published memoir hints at a buried treasure, has sent thousands of hunters to scour the New Mexico wilderness. (NICK COTE\/NYT)<\/span><\/figcaption> <\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Art dealer Forrest Fenn\u2019s self-published memoir hinting at a buried treasure has sent thousands of hunters out to scour the New Mexico wilderness.<\/p>\n

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CUNDIYO, N.M. \u2014<\/p>\n

Cynthia Meachum began her search for the hidden treasure at the confluence of two shallow streams in this tiny village north of Santa Fe, the spot \u201cwhere warm waters halt,\u201d or at least that\u2019s where she thinks they do.<\/p>\n

The only one who knows for sure is Forrest Fenn, who buried the clues to the whereabouts of a bronze chest loaded with riches in a poem printed on Page 132 of his self-published memoir, \u201cThe Thrill of the Chase<\/a>.\u201d It tells of the cancer he beat and the two times he was shot down by enemy fire in Laos and Vietnam when he was a fighter pilot during the Vietnam War.<\/p>\n

The poem has 24 verses. There are nine clues. Or so he says.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Meachum, 62, thinks she has deciphered eight of them \u2014 \u201cor maybe not,\u201d she conceded. She has been second-guessing herself since she started looking for the treasure three years ago.<\/p>\n

Fenn, 85, a successful art dealer in Santa Fe, had no better explanation for hiding a treasure \u2014 he calculates it could be worth $2 million \u2014 than to say he wanted to give families a reason to \u201cget off their couches.\u201d<\/p>\n

He estimates that 65,000 people have joined the search for riches that are described as \u201c265 gold coins, hundreds of gold nuggets, hundreds of rubies, eight emeralds, two Ceylon sapphires, many diamonds, two ancient Chinese jade carvings, pre-Columbian gold bracelets and fetishes, and more.\u201d<\/p>\n

He has only his word to show that the treasure is real.<\/p>\n

Embarking on the search is as easy as buying a state map at a gas station off scenic Route 285, unfolding it on the hood of a rental car and looking for the place \u201cwhere warm waters halt,\u201d as his poem said. But actually finding treasure is not as simple.<\/p>\n

Asking Fenn does not necessarily speed up the process either. Send him a question like, \u201cIs this hidden spot near your home?\u201d and the reply will be maddeningly mysterious.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know how close near is,\u201d he wrote. \u201cTo an ant, a mud puddle can be an ocean.\u201d<\/p>\n

He receives, on average, 100 emails a day, he said, most of them from people wanting a definitive clue. Every Friday, he reveals on a website<\/a> his answer to one of the many questions the searchers ask him, each answer holding the promise of a hint of some sort \u2014 or not.<\/p>\n

A typical question: \u201cMay I ask what type of car you used to go into the mountains to hide the treasure chest?\u201d<\/p>\n

A typical answer: \u201cA sedan.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fenn has offered this much: The treasure is at least 8.25 miles north of Santa Fe, somewhere in the Rocky Mountains and \u201chigher than 5,000 feet above sea level.\u201d He drove, parked and carried the treasure to its hiding spot in two trips. First, he took the cast bronze chest. Then he took the valuables in a backpack.<\/p>\n

Searchers have scoured public and private lands in four states, scouting out possible locations on paper maps, on Google Earth and on foot, using the poem as their guide.<\/p>\n

One woman<\/a> claimed the poem led her to the Christ of the Mines Shrine in Silverton, Colo., where the treasure she found was spiritual \u2014 \u201cthe eternal love of Christ,\u201d she wrote, declaring the search over. Fenn said he had never been to the shrine.<\/p>\n

But other searchers continued looking for a more material reward.<\/p>\n

Some people do not believe Fenn. They assert that he has made up the treasure story to sell more copies of his memoir, whose printing and binding are done according to his precise specifications by Collected Works, a bookstore and coffeehouse in Santa Fe that donates part of the proceeds to charity and keeps the rest.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe has never taken a dime from the sales,\u201d said one of the bookstore\u2019s owners, Mary Wolf.<\/p>\n

Fenn\u2019s wealth appears sizable. A small fortune is on display on the floor and walls of his compound \u2014 Persian rugs, Blackfeet Indian daggers and an assortment of rare books, including the proof sheets for Mark Twain\u2019s \u201cA Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur\u2019s Court,\u201d with 26 of the author\u2019s markings.<\/p>\n

Searchers have risked their lives to find a treasure they are certain is real, braving rushing creeks in Yellowstone National Park only to be rescued by rangers. One man, Randy Bilyeu<\/a>, of Broomfield, Colo., disappeared in January while searching for the treasure along the Rio Grande in New Mexico. He is still missing.<\/p>\n

Meachum, who has been looking for the treasure full time since she lost her job last year repairing lithography machines for a subsidiary of Nikon, once snowshoed 9,000 feet uphill to comb through a search area. She has canvassed 20 different locations, and has taken notes and photographs documenting every reasoning of hers and every turn on a road, trail or canyon.<\/p>\n

She is a student of Fenn\u2019s. Her exploits are neatly cataloged in three binders, his writings are arranged in a neat pile by her desktop, and his quotations are carefully handwritten on the pages of a notebook.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo find this treasure,\u201d she said, \u201cI have to get inside his head.\u201d<\/p>\n

She scrutinized a trout-fishing book, she said, following two streams, Rio Medio and Rio Frijoles, to their meeting spot on lower ground, under a bridge in Cundiyo, their waters warmed by the sun.<\/p>\n

She drove me there last month, to a spot where the rivers\u2019 warm waters halted, and used lines in the poem to explain each of her moves.<\/p>\n

Sometimes, she made sense.<\/p>\n

She climbed rough steps wedged on the face of a mountain, toward a narrow trail above. \u201cAnd take it in the canyon down,\u201d the next line in the poem says. To Meachum, that\u2019s the second clue \u2014 and we were on it.<\/p>\n

She followed the winding, narrow trail down into a canyon. There were rocks on one side. The river rushed down below, sheltered by groves of cottonwood trees. She recommended keeping an eye on the mountains and \u201clook for something unusual.\u201d Keeping an eye on the steep embankment is probably not a bad idea either.<\/p>\n

Clues three, four, five, six, seven and eight revealed themselves one after the other in the verses \u2014 or was it Meachum twisting the words to make them fit?<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019ll be no paddle up your creek,\u201d read the poem, \u201cjust heavy loads and water high.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the edge of a cliff, she closed her eyes and took long deep breaths. Clue nine confronted her: \u201cIf you\u2019ve been wise and found the blaze,\u201d it says, \u201cLook quickly down, your quest to cease.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDo you see anything that looks like the blaze?\u201d she asked me.<\/p>\n

I pointed to a rock that seemed more red than the ones around it.<\/p>\n

\u201cNah,\u201d she said. \u201cThat\u2019s just a rock.\u201d<\/p>\n

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