Chasing the Thrill of Fenn's Treasure (Fiction, Part 6)

This is Part 6 of a work of fiction. Please check my blog for the other parts. This chapter will not make sense unless you've read Parts 1-5 first!

For the next week, Brody hiked around northern New Mexico, following other possible clues to the location of Forrest Fenn’s treasure. He didn’t find anything, but the scenery was pleasant. Each night, Brody re-read parts of the Thrill of the Chase book, becoming ever more convinced that Fenn had hidden his loot further north.

There was little in the book about New Mexico outside of Santa Fe, the town where Fenn had built a business and lived most of his life. Fenn didn’t celebrate the outdoors here and didn’t have the primal memories of it that he’d recounted in the book of his time further north. Others had come to the opposite conclusion, but most of those were based in New Mexico already and may not have an objective view.

Advocates of a New Mexico location point out that Fenn originally said the treasure was in the mountains north of Santa Fe; he never said “the Rocky Mountains” until later on. And he produced and sold his book locally around Santa Fe, never mentioning Colorado, Wyoming, or Montana until later on either. These people feel that the later publication of the four-state map in his subsequent Too Far to Walk book showed that Fenn was responding to the publicity and attention he’d received by widening the search area, when in fact the treasure was in New Mexico. (Or was it all a ploy to sell books?)

Brody disagreed.

Fenn had said the poem contained all the needed information to find the treasure, but that the Thrill of the Chase book included additional clues to the treasure’s location. Most of the book, particularly the parts that dealt with nature and the outdoors, took place in the northern Rocky Mountains. That region held a strong pull on him.

Fenn had spent close to 20 summers (perhaps more) in and around Yellowstone National Park. The treasure was up there somewhere, Brody was fairly sure. But to ground himself and start at the beginning, he had begun his chase from Fenn’s point of view in Santa Fe. Some 30,000 people had searched for this treasure already and the thickest groups of them were in New Mexico; nobody had found it there yet.

He drove north, out of New Mexico and straight through much of Colorado. On the way, he stopped to hike near Pike’s Peak in Colorado Springs, but it didn’t take Brody long to make his way back up to Denver. Again, he crossed paths with Denver, Colorado, that great crossroads of the mountain west. Like most seekers of the Fenn treasure, Brody was fairly sure that it wasn’t in the Colorado Rockies. Fenn had never lived in Colorado and there was nothing at all in the book suggesting locations in this state; it hadn’t been a major part of Fenn’s life. And it seemed laughable that the treasure would be hidden in or around a major city.

But since the fastest route north passed through Denver anyway, he’d stop there and indulge in some hiking.

Denver

On paper, Denver was an intriguing possibility for a couple of major reasons. First, the “home of Brown” clue could lead to the Molly Brown House, an historic home near downtown Denver that had been turned into a museum. Forrest Fenn had said that the treasure was not associated with a manmade structure. But at that time, people were tearing up old outhouses all around the West (on one interpretation of the Brown clue) and he seemed to have uttered that statement to discourage such searches. He had said that the treasure was not associated with a structure, but that did not necessarily mean that a structure was not the Brown clue; the treasure still could be some distance away from that marker.

Second, the spot that Fenn had picked to hide his treasure was originally where he wanted his body to lay after death. Fenn had been fighting cancer and believed he would not last much longer, but after leading people on the thrill of the chase, he recovered his health and has continued living strong. To think that an outdoorsman like Fenn would want to be buried in the heart of a major city he’d never lived in seems preposterous.

But when someone asked Fenn where he would park his car if he were going on a one-way trip to the place where he’d hid his treasure (and wanted his body to rest), he mentioned the parking lot of the Denver Museum of Science & Nature. That information can be found in bestselling author Douglas Preston’s Forward to another Fenn book, Once Upon a While. It was a weird answer and probably more jokingly fun than serious. In a verbal answer to a similar question, Fenn reportedly had given a different answer: the parking lot at Northern Arizona University. But since he’d ruled out the entire state of Arizona, and since NAU’s location in Flagstaff, AZ was further south than Santa Fe, it didn’t seem a likely location. Perhaps the two places were part of some larger code, though Fenn also said the answers were not coded.

A lot of his information seemed calculated to expand the search area and get people to step outdoors and enjoy nature (which Fenn had said was the main purpose of him hiding the treasure).

As strange as it seemed, Fenn had dropped that suggestion about Denver. Brody would spend a couple of days poking around in city. And he would hike some outdoorsy locations within reasonable distance of the city center.

After the long drive, he stopped for dinner at a Japanese noodle place near the Denver Tech Center. Brody took out his phone and read Forrest Fenn’s poem again. Fenn had said it contained all of the clues to where he had hidden the treasure chest, which was somewhere in the Rocky Mountains in one of four states: New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, or Montana. If Brody were a betting man, he’d wager on Montana, but he was working his way up the map. Colorado did not make much sense, since Fenn had little history there and had not mentioned it in his book. But he’d investigate Denver due to the clues that Fenn had dropped about it, even if they were unlikely to be anything more than red herrings dropped to enlarge the search area.

One thing was certain: Fenn had said the poem contained all the clues that one needed to find the treasure:

As 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.

Opening a map of Denver, Brody pinpointed the Molly Brown House and the Museum of Nature & Science as possible starting points. They weren’t that far from one another. The Molly Brown House might be “the home of Brown” and Fenn had once mentioned the museum parking lot as a place to leave his car. But Fenn also had said that if you didn’t have the first clue, then you had nothing...

This was Part 6 of a fictional story

Please check my blog for the other parts. The picture above is a montage made by the author based on images from the Forest Fenn books, Thrill of the Chase (One Horse Land & Cattle Co. 2010) and Too Far to Walk (same publisher 2013) and public domain material, including the border photo of the Yellowstone River. Here is a link to Fenn's book; I do not make any profit from recommending it. https://www.collectedworksbookstore.com/product/thrill-chase-forrest-fenn I simply thought the whole saga would provide an interesting background for this novel.