I will not site my work today I will leave fact checking to the reader. For those who have read my post they know how reliable I try to be. I will not try for political correctness. I think being worried over what you write is a form of controlling speech. I believe in freedom of speech. I taught for so long I come off badly sometimes acting like a know it all. Let me say I have stumbled around for nine years so I know firsts hand what I don’t know. I am not the smartest searcher or the lead searcher leading the flock.

To solve Forrest Fenn’s poem will take some basic rules of logic. An intuitive may beat others to the treasure, and if they do, it will be in a logical place. Forrest said, when it is found, people will say of course it would be there. Unfortunately intuition and logic are polar opposites they can transcend into something greater but for me when these poles stand alone I can get future along with my solves. I remote view and listen to strange explanations about the treasure’s location also, and without bias, but never do I do both at one time. This way I avoid the rabbit holes. Today lets use logic.

The chest is under or in something that the sun doesn’t shine on or in. A box 10″ x 10″ x 5″ is extremely hard to find. The blaze can be seen but people have seen it without knowing it was the blaze in the poem. The treasure is in the mountains where people don’t go but close to a place people do go. The treasure may be wet. It might be against the law to look for the treasure because of where it is hidden. It is not legal to dig in many possible searched sites and Forrest says we don’t need any tools to retrieve his secret. If you have been boots on the ground then you know the box is dam near impossible to find and that’s why Forrest never needed misdirection or trickery. The poem is straight forward and our task is marring the clues to a map. It is that simple. But that isn’t simple, is it? So if Fenn worked so hard on the poem I propose we use the poem and take it at its face value. Here is what I come up with using logic.

The first hint is “hint of riches new and old.” First thing an architect (Forrest says he built the poem like an architect) does is select a site. Treasure State Montana is the site. Every word was workout over 15 years so if it took 15 years to come up with “hint of treasures new and old ” just to tell me treasure is in the treasure chest then it ain’t that great of a poem. The book is very good at telling us what is in the box. First clue “begin it where warm waters halt” is referred to in Fenn’s Fire Hole experience were he gets to a comfortable distance from the hot spring . Too close too hot, too far too cold as warm water halts. Put a toe in to check the temp. Notice in this hint it is warm water halts but in the poem the clue is where warm waters halt. More than one hot spring feeds this place that is too far from those springs to be warm. An example of this idea would be Mammoth Hot Springs in Wyoming where it empties into Boiling River and heads north into Montana and past Gardiner (referred to in the Captain Kidd dream in Fenn’s book) and into Yankee Jim’s canyon. Here the map lines up marring it to the poem.

The second clue is to take it down not too far but too far to walk. Forrest gives the hint in a piece he wrote about going from Barnes hole in Yellowstone Park to Baker hole in Montana. He said it was not far but too far to walk. (This was brought up by a member the the Boise think tank and it should be looked up to validate). Anyway that distance it about 12 miles following the winding river.

“Take it in the canyon down” is the next clue. Take this cooler water into the canyon down. But here is a conflict; how do you take it down. Well don’t walk , it is too far and a boat is not the way Forrest says he went. Forrest says he drove. So witch is it? Did he drive take a boat or walk. All the the above. He takes a boat and walks the first time, drives and walks the second time, and rides a bicycle and walks the last time.

This place he has known he provably fished and boated. He thinks, if I could pick a place to sleep the long sleep it will be here. Then his opportunity comes along and he goes to hide the treasure. Here he rents a car ; he said he worries about rental records so he must have rental records to worry about. He drives to a put in, and walks to the place he was before when he was a teen. The last time has yet to come and may not happen but in this case there will not be a car to find unless you go to Denver where he intends to leave it in the parking lot of the Natural History Museum. At the signing in Santa Fe I was there when a lady asked Forrest if he would take her to the treasure in chest. Forrest answered quickly with wit asking her if she had a plane. Huge slip of the tongue. It is about 90 miles to the Colorado boarder from Santa Fe why would anyone take a plan unless it is near an airport in Northern New Mexico other wise it would be a lot less hassle to drive. So why a bicycle because he hints at throwing a bicycle into water high and it not hurting anyone if he did. This is how he transports to his special place without leaving evidence of where he went. In the book he is transporting his coach who is too ill to walk. Water high is a fishing term it refers to water high up on your waders. It is dangerous to let water into you waders as the water can hold you down, and you could drown. If it is water high then heavy loads is strong current and that is reason not to paddle up your creek.

Didn’t finish but if I had I would have explained why the Beaver Lodge is the home of brown and the blaze. Its in a creek mouth off the Madison.