128
JANUARY 2013
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HEMISPHERESMAGAZINE.COM
signature cocktail, a blend of light rum,
sweet vermouth andAmare o di Saronno
sprinkled with gold flakes, and a Forrest
Fenn sandwich, consisting of pastrami
with apple sauerkraut on marble rye
(
Fenn’s favorite).
When Fenn himself walks down the
street these days, locals constantly stop
him; they want to know if anyone has
found the treasure. Others shake his hand
and call him a hero. Local jeweler Marc
Howard hails Fenn as a cross between
Will Rogers andMark Twain. “He’s a story-
weaver, and has created a legacy that will
reach out into the future.”
Fenn is modest about the whole thing,
though. “I was hoping the treasure chase
would cause some excitement and get a
fewguys out into themountains,” he says.
“
I did not expect it to get so big so fast.”
He hasn’t gone back to his hiding place
to see if the treasure is still there. He
assumes it hasn’t been found (though he
knows of “more than a few people” who
have searched within 500 feet of the site),
and that suits him fine.
“
I think that I’ll be a li le
disappointed when it is
found, because themystery
will be gone.”
One clue follower, Dal
Neitzel, has been looking
for the treasure for more
than two years. He’s already
made five trips down from
his home in Washington
state, and plans to keep
looking. Not that the booty
is Neitzel’s primary motivation: Fenn’s
treasure hunt has turned into something
bigger, something more meaningful.
“
Forrest Fenn is the hider of undiscov-
ered dreams for thousands of folks who
go looking for that treasure,” he says, “and
discover not the place where the treasure
is hidden, but the place in their heart
where adventure sleeps, and trails begin.”
Travel journalist
MARGIE GOLDSMITH
lives in
New York City, where high rents preclude bury-
ing treasures worth more than a few dollars.
FEATURES
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THE THRILL OF THE CHASE
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CONTINUED FROM PAGE 70
says, “is to not believe anything that is
not in my poem or otherwise in my book.
There’s some misinformation out there.
For instance, I never said I
buried
the chest,
I said only that I
hid
it. That is not to say it
is
not
buried, so maybe we need to define
the terms. Does ‘hidden’ mean in plain
sight? What is the difference between
‘
buried,’ ‘entombed’ and ‘sepultured’?What
does the word ‘blaze’ in the poem mean?
A horse can have a blaze on its forehead,
a blaze can be scraped on a tree to mark
one’s way, a blaze can mean a flame or a
scar on a rock. And what
about ‘water high’? Does
it mean deep, or higher
than normal?”
Fenn generally refuses
to give additional clues,
but he’ll make the rare
exception—of sorts.
Wh e n o n e woma n
emailed him to complain
that the clues were too
difficult, he told her the
treasure chest is located
more than 300 miles west of Toledo.
Beyond queries from treasure seekers,
Fenn has also received a number of le ers
from people simply wondering why on
earth hewould do this. “I wanted to create
some intrigue and adventure andmaybe a
li le mystery,” Fenn explains.
Plus, he says, “anyone who dies with
over $50 is a failure.”
FINDINGFENN’STREASURE
has proved
so difficult that some are le questioning
whether the whole thing is an elaborate
hoax. But doubters need only ask Fenn’s
friend Douglas Preston, a bestselling
author whose novel
The Codex
is based
on Fenn’s story.
“
That gold is out there—I held it with
my own hands,” says Preston, one of the
few to have seen the chest before Fenn
hid it. “Some of themost wonderful things
in the treasure are enormous gold nug-
gets the size of hen’s eggs, weighing more
than a pound each, and worth several
times their bullion value. He included
things that would survive a long time, and
that would be interesting and unusual.
And the chest itself is quite rare; it’s a
Romanesque lockbox from the 12th cen-
tury, and with the gold and jewels inside,
it weighs 42 pounds.”
Surprisingly, there have been only a
few items about the treasure in the local
newspaper or on the news. But there
are certainly other signs of it around
Santa Fe. The Inn and Spa at Loretto
offers guests a “Thrill of the Chase”
package, which includes two nights’
accommodations, a scavenger hunt and
an autographed copy of Fenn’s book.
There’s also a “Thrill of the Chase”
FENN JUST WANTED
TO CREATE SOME EXCITEMENT,
GET A FEW PEOPLE
OUTDOORS. “I DID NOT
EXPECT IT TO GET SO BIG
SO FAST,” HE SAYS.
