Posted on 09/24/2020 9:18:13 PM PDT by yesthatjallen
My friend Forrest Burke Fenn passed away at the age of 90 earlier this month, and if I have anything to say about it, far too soon.
September 8 was certainly not the first time Forrest made me cry.
I am the person who found Forrest’s famed treasure. The moment it happened was not the triumphant Hollywood ending some surely envisioned; it just felt like I had just survived something and was fortunate to come out the other end. For so long, I thought I might be haunted for the rest of my days by knowing where the treasure was but being unable to find it. Would I still be out there in that section of forest 50 years from now looking for it? When I finally found it, the primary emotion was not joy but rather the most profound feeling of relief in my entire life.
I figured out the location where he wished to die (and thus, where his treasure was) back in 2018, but it took me many months to figure out the exact spot. This treasure hunt was the most frustrating experience of my life. There were a few times when I, exhausted, covered in scratches and bites and sweat and pine pitch, and nearing the end of my day’s water supply, sat down on a downed tree and just cried alone in the woods in sheer frustration.
I spent about 25 full days of failure looking for the treasure at that location before getting it.
When I got back to my rental car after the find, I put my hands on the steering wheel and bawled my eyes out. Then I remembered Forrest said the person who found the chest would either laugh out loud or start crying.
I realized he had been right and started to get annoyed that I still couldn’t stop his quotes from popping into my head even after the chase was finally done.
I laughed at myself for getting annoyed. Then I realized I had just fulfilled his other premonition about laughing out loud.
In the weeks after, I still couldn’t stop myself from reflexively thinking about what he was thinking. After living inside his head for two years, meeting him in person was sensory overload. I could now analyze his words and facial expressions and tone in real time, mere feet away from me. I could ask him questions about the chase and he would actually answer them! I never got used to it, and I was still analyzing him unnecessarily when he died, unable to turn my obsession off.
Now that he’s gone, I’m no longer annoyed those Fenn quotes are still rattling around my brain. His words will live with me and every searcher out there for the rest of our lives.
I spent a couple more days crying after Forrest passed. He had meant so much to me in such a short time, and I had so much more I had wanted to ask him, the kind of things that were just better done face to face. For weeks he had wanted to fly me back to Santa Fe to spend more time with him (he even tried to convince me to move there), but circumstances out of our control made it more practical for me to come later.
I had never met Forrest until this June, and it was destined to be our only time spent together in person.
But I’m thankful for the time we did have. When I met Forrest, I told him I hadn’t been sure I would ever get to meet him. The treasure was just too hard to find. He told me with a big smile that he had always said it was difficult to find but not impossible, and I had proved him right.
Forrest Fenn was born in 1930 in Temple, Texas. A poor student who disappointed his educator father, he grew into a life of adventure — a decorated Air Force pilot who was shot down in the Vietnam War and survived the Laos jungle, a rakish and prominent art dealer who courted the rich and famous, and, in his third and final act, a compulsive memoirist who wrote a poem that launched a treasure hunt in the Rocky Mountains that inspired many thousands of regular folks the world over.
The first line of his New York Times obituary calls him “eccentric.” “I’ve been called ‘eccentric’ and I’m flattered by that,” Forrest once said, “because the difference between an eccentric and a kook is an eccentric has money.”
Forrest Fenn was the kind of man to drink buttermilk out of the bottle. He kept alligators in the garden of his art gallery. He collected run-over soda cans as pieces of found art. He loved books and language and held onto words like “crean” that apparently nobody but he still used. He went into business with former Texas Governor John Connally, the Johnson and Nixon confidante who was wounded by the “Magic Bullet” in the Kennedy assassination, to sell Elmyr de Hory’s famed fraudulent masterpieces as fraudulent masterpieces. Forrest once shot a mountain lion and leapt down into a canyon, grabbed hold of the top of a tree, climbed down it, and tied the carcass to a rope so he could lift it out and get a $50 bounty from the Cattleman’s Association.
He was also a man with an independent mind and a security with his masculinity (perhaps uncommon to those of his generation) that allowed him to express difficult feelings and question his own decisions and values in life, becoming a pacifist after retiring from the military and even regretting that affair with the beautiful mountain lion that had run in his direction.
Too much to copy and paste...
Both Fenn and this guy don't seem to understand everyone wants to know HOW and WHERE the treasure was found.
Hopefully this guy will tell us exactly how he worked out the clues.
Assuming there is even a man who “found” it... How convenient he is anonymous and Fenn is dead.
A very interesting story. I hope he writes a book or an article on how he went about finding the Fenn treasure. We would all like to know the "rest of the story".
My instincts say he is male, but he talks about crying three times in the first couple minutes of the essay, which is kind of weird. Perhaps a very emotional gay male?
One thing for certain...
The author is an excellent writer, probably a professional writer.
I thought the author's poem was feeble, but I think Forrest Fenn put his original treasure clues in a poem, so maybe the author's poem is an identity clue filled homage to Fenn? If that is the case, it is just a question of time before someone recognizes the writing style or the choice of certain words and identifies the author.
I also think it is quite suspicious that the treasure was discovered by an anonymous person just months before Fenn's death.
He loved books and language and held onto words like “crean” that apparently nobody but he still used.
Just don't read the "Urban Dictionary" entry for that.
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