armchair treasure hunt

Welcome to Forrest Fenn Friday: Questions on The Thrill of the Chase. This segment has the goal to help fine-tune solutions and narrow down or confirm search areas for finding Forrest Fenn’s Treasure Chest. Mysterious Writings knows you first have to ask the right questions to discover the right answers.

Lots searchers, ourselves included, wonder if the poem can be solved by simply reading the poem and marrying the clues to geographic locations.  Something Forrest commented on doing in MW’s Six Questions of February 2017.

Forrest said: “… I would advise new searchers to look for the clues in my poem and try to marry them to a place on a map. It seems like the longer one thinks about the search the more they complicate the problem.”

Also in a MW Q/A on April 5th, 2017, Forrest mentions again: “….if you knew the geographic location of each clue it would be a map to the treasure. f”

So like many others, we asked ourselves, and it’s the Question for this episode of Forrest Fenn Friday:

‘Will finding the location of the treasure chest take any specialized knowledge?’

Here is the MW Video of Forrest Fenn Friday: Specialized Knowledge featuring that Question.  You may watch or read below.

In the above video we share the top six quotes from Forrest, which we feel, suggest no specialized knowledge is needed to solve Forrest Fenn’s poem. That doesn’t mean it will be easy. Forrest has said it won’t be.  And this is obviously true, since the Treasure Chest hasn’t been found yet.  However, the quotes do suggest the solution can be found by the average person applying common sense, with a mix of imagination to it.

Here are the Quotes:

The Quotes:

1) MW Question posted 2014:

Q) Is any specialized knowledge required to find the treasure? For instance, something learned during your time in the military, or from a lifetime of fly fishing? Or do you really expect any ordinary average person without your background to be able to correctly interpret the clues in the poem? ~mdavis19

A)No specialized knowledge is required mdavis19, and I have no expectations. My Thrill of the Chase book is enough to lead an average person to the treasure.f

 

2)Dal’s Blog- Scrapbook 62 (April 2014)

Some searchers overrate the complexity of the search. Knowing about head pressures, foot pounds, acre feet, bible verses, Latin, cubic inches, icons, fonts, charts, graphs, formulas, curved lines, magnetic variation, codes, depth meters, riddles, drones or ciphers, will not assist anyone to the treasure location, although those things have been offered as positive solutions. Excellent research materials are TTOTC, Google Earth, and/or a good map.f

 

3)Excerpt from MW’s Six Questions 2018

Q) How much knowledge do you think a normal East Coast Kid has to have to find your treasure?  Or is Imagination enough.  As an example, would an East Coast Kid have to become familiar with the western ways, languages, and other manners of the Rockies?

A) It helps to know something about Rocky Mountain geography when making plans to search for my treasure. Rocking chair ideas can lead one to the first few clues, but a physical presence is needed to complete the solve. Google Earth cannot help with the last clue. f

 

4) MW Question posted 2014:

Q) Forrest, You talk about how you worked on, and changed, the poem for many years. As you read it today, are you still completely content with the belief that someone will eventually understand and follow your poem precisely to the treasure?” ~ John

A) Thanks John, I think your question is wrought from misinformation. I have no real feelings about when the treasure might or might not be found. But eventually sounds too far away. The treasure is there for the person who can find it and I think that person will be positive in their attitude and deliberate in their actions. No one has any secret information that will take them to the hiding place. It’s in the poem for all to see.f

 

5) MW Question posted 2016

Q) Mr. Fenn, I am not even close to solving your riddle. I’ve tried for months and nothing works. I am not asking for a clue to the treasure, I’m asking for a clue to the clues. Please help me.  ~Mary

A) Dear Mz. Mary, The solve is difficult for many searchers because their minds think the clues are tougher to decrypt than they really are. Some say they are trying to think outside the box, as if the solution lies somewhere out there.

Until now I have resisted telling them to get back in the box where their thoughts are comfortable and flow more easily. The blueprint is challenging so the treasure may be located by the one who can best adjust. To illustrate my point go to YouTube – Smarter Every Day. f

 

6) Cover of The Thrill of the Chase book:

All that will be needed are the clues, some resolve, a little imagination, and maybe a six-pack to help celebrate the thrill of a breathtaking discovery.

 

So there you have them.  Let us know what other quotes you feel might add support for the Question in comments below.

 

 

 

30 Comments

  1. Mr. Fenn, Is there any level of knowledge of US history that is required to properly interpret the clues in your poem. ~Steve R
    No Steve R, The only requirement is that you figure out what the clues mean. But a comprehensive knowledge of geography might help.f

    Specialized knowledge vs Comprehensive knowledge. I wonder what the difference is?

    OH!

  3. I believe the poem is like playing golf. It’s simple, you just put the ball on the ground and hit it with the club down to the hole. Then you start playing and you realize it’s not that simple. Then after trying every new club and widget and glove they have to offer you realize all it really takes is practice and focus and time. And then, in the end, you admit, it’s really pretty simple!

    Chris from Colorado

  5. This quote has always bothered me:

    “…if you knew the geographic location of each clue it would be a map to the treasure. f”

    I can’t help but suspect that after finding each of the 9 clues what you then have is not the chest but rather the real treasure map.

    “Great sprinting on that last mile. Now the marathon starts!”

    antigroove

  6. The beginning was easier to find after spending the entire summer there. I think being there is the most important clue. You can’t know anything without finding out. Best of luck to all. See you this summer.

    fallingrock

    1. Hello Iceman. I concur. I wonder how much in depth one needs to learn before it’s considered “specialized knowledge”. I realize there’s nothing wrong with knowledge no matter how much is learned. I’m not sure if that makes any sense. I know what I’m trying to say, but sometimes it’s not understood.

      pdenver

  10. Didn’t watch the video, but don’t see reference in the text to this one from your site last Sept which seems appropriate for the topic:

    “Hello Mr. Fenn,

    For those of us that do not speak a lick of Spanish, would a Spanish to English dictionary be helpful in our search for your treasure chest?

    Thanks,
    John”

    “You should not need to look any words up John. Good luck. f”

    aardvarkbark

  11. I have thought about Forrest’s statement that we don’t need specialized knowledge many times.

    I know it’s weird…but what keeps coming to my mind is that we don’t need a lot of knowledge about mountain bikes to actually GO mountain biking.

    My mind goes there for a few reasons. Here’s the first…

    https://www.mtbskillstraining.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/2013-Specialized-Stump-Jumper-HT-sfw.jpg

    You can see from the link that the bike is a Specialized Stumpjumper…but you don’t need a fancy bike…or even know how to jump stumps…to enjoy the outdoors on a mountain bike. (Remember the axeman and the stumps at the end of TTOTC book?)

    The second reason is this…from Forrest himself…on Dal’s site back in 2012…

    “I am a very simple person and you want me to have copious meetings with lawyers, preachers, undertakers and your family. What is wrong with me just riding my bike out there and throwing it in the “water high” when I am through with it? You don’t know how many man hours I have spent on that subject.” – Forrest Fenn

    Coincidence? I don’t know. I also don’t know how many man hours he spent on that subject…but it makes me wonder.

    JC1117

        1. Yeah, so much pain past, present, and future. Not necessarily war, pain comes from many sources.
          But it’s been my honor to take a stand against the bad twice in my life, under threat of “something could happen to you.”
          Although they were pretty small occurrences in the scope of the bigger picture.
          One of which I’m under a court order to never speak of. But that one wasn’t really much of a threat, they were arrogant but pretty darn dumb and easily outwitted. And I am forever grateful to all the fine and decent people that I relied on for my small win for the good guys.

          And still, if I could only, I’d like very much to take one more small stand against that bad side of the universe, and ease some small degree of suffering, before I lay me down and go to that better place.
          And be once again with the world’s greatest lady I love so very much.

          Damn the tears. I’m forging a smile in the furnace that burns inside me.

          half a pecan

    1. No, I’m pretty sure Forrest, being the nature lover he is, would not care at all about including modern technology; I’ve been studying the poem and I think the phrase is a reference to when the Summer starts to fade and the warm water ceases to be. To be sure, it is clearly a reference to the summer, or warm season. At that time the Blaze can be more easily seen. Either it refers to the coloring of the fall leaves (fall, as in Canyon Down) or, to be more realistic, what can be seen once the leaves have fallen.

      And, if interested, I have a website. It deals mostly with the integration of the Bible with the A’ s, B’s, and C’s of numerical analysis. It’s marked private, though. If interested you would need to be willing to write and be able to provide a good enough reason for me to be persuaded to grant you access. And, it is also an accounting of the Beatles. My favorite song by far, right now anyway, is, with all sincerity, Let It Be.

      Jacob

  16. We should keep in mind what Forrest wrote in the Epilogue of the book:

    “…one should not let knowing a little bit be a substitute for learning more.”

    I didn’t know anything about Yellowstone Park before I started, but now I sure know a lot; and I doubt I could have built my general solve without learning that stuff.

    I think I am agreeing with most of the other posters here. Searchers can go in at any level of knowledge and learn as they progress.

    Muset

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