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Many times throughout the memoir, Forrest recalled his most indelible moments fly-fishing the waters around Yellowstone. It says: “To be suddenly connected through a rainbow arc of rod and run of line to something as purely wild as God’s own trout produces astonishment at the cellular level and, at least for a moment, blurs the borders between man and nature.” We finally got a copy of his book from a Goodwill, and when we opened it up, one of the first pages caught our eye: This page from the book Flywater shows a beautiful set of rainbows in Yellowstone. Mike Crockett was also diagnosed with cancer around the same time as Forrest and attributes his unlikely recovery to fishing. In it, Forrest mentions a book by Grant McClintock and Mike Crockett titled Flywater.
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ffįorrest always precedes his poem with a phrase about how the clues will “lead you to the end of my rainbow and to the treasure.” Most dismiss it as an awkward Leprechaun reference, but could the rainbow be a clue? A possible hint comes from a chapter right before the poem. This poem contains nine clues that if followed precisely, will lead you to the end of my rainbow and the treasure. The Fenn Poem consists of the following 30 lines. This is our interpretation of the poem, the adventure it led us on, and the amazing discovery we found at the end. From reading his books and blogs, The Journal of a Trapper, and the countless reports from fellow searchers, we built up a plan and bought our tickets to the place that we felt was the most promising: Yellowstone National Park. To have an honest shot at locating it, we knew we had to read the memoir carefully and learn everything about him: about his summers in Yellowstone fishing with his father, and the collections of marbles, pottery and arrowheads about flying fighters in Korea and Vietnam, and opening the successful art gallery in New Mexico about the visits from Presidents and school children, the struggle with cancer–with a 20% chance to of survival–and the waterfall. We had done quite a bit of amateur geocaching before and I had dabbled in the MIT Mystery Hunt, but hunting for real treasure was stepping into the pro-leagues. Forrest Fenn at his home in Sante Fe.Īndy and I had the book and were determined to give the chase a good attempt. That’s enough to get people off the couch and searching around their shed for the shovel. But some have tried and the current estimate is around USD $3 million. Many objects are priceless pieces of art making it hard to say how much the complete treasure is worth. Even the chest is a rare cast bronze Romanesque Lock Box that Forrest purchased from a museum curator for what he calls an enormous sum (as it was “the perfect treasure chest”). There’s also a special silver bracelet with turquoise beads excavated from Mesa Verde that Forrest won in a game of pool. Between the egg-sized nuggets of pure gold, there is an assembly of rare artifacts including a 17th-century Spanish emerald gold ring, a 2,000 year old Indian necklace from Columbia and an antique dragon coat bracelet with 260 rubies, emeralds, sapphires and diamonds. But the treasure isn’t some high seas contraband, it’s really the pinnacle memento of a master collector that tells of a lifetime of exploration and discovery. To understand the excitement, just look at the pictures of the treasure: it’s a massive stash of gold coins, jewels and nuggets, with everything tossed in wily-nilly like the booty of a careless pirate. People are cleaning out their savings to buy airline tickets and metal detectors and posting theories all over the internet. Ever since, thousands of adventurers have been scouring the Rocky Mountains with the book in one hand and a shovel in the other. Part of the actual treasure, (photo taken by Forrest before it was hidden.)įorrest’s memoir, titled The Thrill of the Chase, was published in 2010 and word soon got out about it containing clues. All you had to do was decode each cryptic stanza and navigate the wild backcountry for instant wealth and a story fit for Indiana Jones. He had published a memoir of his life with a poem containing clues that–if followed precisely–would lead straight to it.
#THE THRILL OF THE CHASE SIX FEET UNDER FULL#
Some eccentric old man named Forrest Fenn had hidden a box full of gold “somewhere in the mountains north of Sante Fe” and was daring people to go search for it. My brother Andy and I found out about the treasure the way most people did it was one of those daily news items that everyone shares the next day.