A millionaire has hidden a chest full of gold in the Rockies. A poem. Our free email newsletters. If not for the treasure, it seems unlikely that Forrest Fenn and Darrell Seyler would ever have crossed paths. Fenn is an 8. 5- year- old retired art dealer from Santa Fe; Darrell is a 5. Seattle. Fenn grew up exploring Yellowstone National Park; Darrell bounced in and out of foster homes. After a bad tour in Vietnam, Fenn wandered the plateaus and canyons of the desert Southwest; after a divorce, Darrell spent a few unfortunate months on the Dallas club scene. Logo original du film DonnYet the two are inextricably linked by an incredible fact: For the past three years, Darrell has been searching the Rocky Mountains for a chest filled with an estimated million dollars in gold, and Fenn knows where it is. In fact, he put it there.
Fenn has spent his life amassing treasure. As a kid growing up in the 1. Temple, Texas, halfway between Dallas and San Antonio, he hunted for arrowheads with his father. Advertising Programmes Business Solutions +Google About Google Google.com . Search; Images; Maps; Play; YouTube; News; Gmail; Drive; More. Get more information about Virginia Field on TMDb. Week-End With Father as Phyllis Reynolds. 1936: Lloyd's of London as Polly. Beautiful actress Virginia Field starred in many B movies and programmers from the 1930s to the 1960s. Week-End with Father (1951). Every summer, his family drove their 1. Chevy to Yellowstone National Park, where Fenn pulled trout from the streams and scoured the riverbanks looking for agates. By 1. 3, he was a professional fishing guide in the area. At 1. 6, he read Osborne Russell's Journal of a Trapper . He was shot down twice, the second time spending a night alone in the jungle hiding from Pathet Lao forces before being rescued. He was discharged in 1. Santa Fe to start an art gallery, selling paintings, sculptures, and artifacts he'd traded for or found throughout the Four Corners region. When I met Fenn at his home in September of last year, a museum's worth of mementos adorned his study . Some are worth a lot of money; others are valuable only for the memories they represent. The next year, Fenn was diagnosed with kidney cancer and given a 2. He decided he'd go out with a flourish of minor mystery. He'd fill a 1. 0- by- 1. The only way to find him . Fenn put his plan on hold until 2. So, like the scores of outlaws and miners whose legends still have shovel- wielding optimists wandering the American West, he stashed his prize. Then he printed the poem in his memoir and waited for the story to spread. It's Thanksgiving weekend, and Darrell and I are speeding east from Seattle toward Wyoming on I- 9. When I stopped by his place for the first time, two weeks ago, Darrell said point- blank that he knew where the chest was. Like a lot of searchers, Darrell learned of the Fenn treasure while perusing the internet on a work break. After a bit of research, he decided that he knew . He had found it on Google Earth, and it lined up with some of Fenn's clues. He went to retrieve the treasure in January 2. But hunting for treasure was like living out his childhood dreams; he'd had Raiders of the Lost Ark on repeat as a kid. He spent most of 2. Fenn's clues, and made the 1. Yellowstone 1. 7 times between January 2. May 2. 01. 4. Darrell is hardly unique. Fenn estimates that at least 3. In 2. 01. 3 in Tererro, New Mexico, a man was charged with damaging a cultural artifact for digging beneath the white cross of a roadside memorial. Another man dug up graves, even though Fenn has been very careful never to say that he buried the treasure . He was looking at this photo last night and realized that the chest ? It was a location he'd searched previously, just not the cliff. Around 3 a. m., we stop at a Walmart to pick up rope, gloves, and binoculars. The clerk gives us a funny look when we check out . But it's warmish when we don snowshoes and set out to a location I've sworn not to reveal. Approaching the top of the 5. Darrell says we'll tie off a rope so he can climb down to the spot. He hasn't brought a climbing harness, however, just a length of fraying cord and the $1. Walmart rope. After watching Darrell tie a knot, I replace it with a real one. Fenn has repeatedly said that the treasure is . But Fenn is also no ordinary octogenarian, Darrell argues. Also, Fenn made his money selling native artifacts from the Southwest. Where did Southwestern cultures hide valuables? On cliffs. So down Darrell climbs, to the edge of where things turn vertical. But for all his enthusiasm, Darrell is afraid of heights, and that fear speaks to him on a deeper level than treasure. He decides he wants a better rope, better footing. He wants to survey the cliff from down below so he knows where he's going. The sun is getting low. Let's come back tomorrow, he says. Like something outof an airport mystery novel, Fenn's poem is a rhyming literary treasure map: six stanzas, nine sequential clues, all as vague as a jigsaw puzzle strewn across the table. The key to solving it, most searchers agree, is figuring out the line . Outside of that, there's hardly a consensus as to which lines are real clues. Subsequent information from Fenn has narrowed the search area to elevations between 5,0. Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, and anywhere north of Santa Fe in New Mexico, but those states are chock- full of hot springs, warmish lakes, brown trout, brown bears, and ranches and mountains named for one Brown or another, so it's hard to get more zeroed- in than that. Dal Neitzel, a searcher from Lummi Island, Washington, who runs a website about the hunt, has gone looking for it more than 5. A longtime underwater treasure hunter, Neitzel first heard of Fenn while searching for a sunken ship in Uruguay with Fenn's nephew, Crayton Fenn, who told story after story about his madcap uncle. If this guy is going to give me some, this will be easy. There are as many solutions to the poem as there are nooks and crannies in the Rocky Mountains. For example, if you start at Flaming Gorge Reservoir in Wyoming (where warm waters halt) and continue downstream 1. French Canadian fur trapper Baptiste Brown (home of Brown). Follow the river and you come to Fort Misery, where pioneer Joseph Meek hid out among notorious outlaws (no place for the meek). The geography, the trappers, and the wordplay all read like classic Fenn. But: no treasure. Go online and you'll find folks parsing Fenn's every word for hidden meanings and contradictions. The level of scrutiny is formidable . It's also a race. The next morning, our plan is the same. Hike in, get the treasure, and cannonball home. Except this time Harry Greer, a friend of Darrell's, comes with us. He wants to earn the money Darrell promised him, so he volunteers to be the one who rappels down the cliff. As he continues to lower himself, I track his progress via grunts of pain echoing through the wood. Darrell is below, dodging falling rocks and excitedly guiding him to the treasure. He looks down at Darrell, who is waiting like a puppy for a treat, and then searches everything again. On the drive home, he told me that I could start searching his spot if I wanted. He was done: no more poem. Then, one morning a few weeks later, I get several emails in a row, then a text to let me know that he sent an email. A few hours later he calls. He's back on the hunt. THE POEMAs I have gone alone in there. And with my treasures bold,I can keep my secret where,And hint of riches new and old. 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. 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. 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. 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. I give you title to the gold. Excerpted from an article that originally appeared in Outside. Reprinted with permission.
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