Firehole Bears it All! -Big Picture-

[MeepleMajesty]

I was asked to consolidate this into one thread, so here it is; the 'big picture' at Firehole Canyon Dr.

Late last year my son and I were using Google Earth in a VR headset to search Yellowstone for possible areas in the search for f's spot. We were going off of stories from himself as a child exploring the NW area, I had read that many had searched the Firehole canyon area, so that's where we started.

Here is a map of the thermals in Yellowstone with an arrow where the waters are warm for some ways as they travel north down the canyon.



We began our search here on Google Earth and traveled north through the canyon as f would have been familiar with.

Now, once we got down to the end of Firehole Canyon Dr we stood back and was looking at National Park Mountain, and there it was; plain as day!

Here is a direct link that will take you right to the side of the mountain on Google Earth so you can see it for yourself: https://earth.google.com/web/@44.635...9.44112638t,0r

Why did f say, "Show the poem to a child."?

Why did he say, "Imagination is more important than knowledge."?

Why did he tell us that the tiles in his shower looked like animals and people in scrapbook 116? "When mother nature made the tiles in my shower she probably giggled, knowing I’d be embarrassed. Everywhere I look I see another face staring at me so I don’t dare shower without my jeans on. I never have any privacy anymore. f."

Here is an image taken from Google Earth: hoB



Here it is outlined:




And here is an image standing right under it:



You can't however get the best view of the entire image until you get up onto the hills opposite the image, where I'll show you next...

Now, Firehole Canyon Dr is a one-way road, but as soon as you turn onto it, the bear is right at the very first 'put in'.

Cont...

I haven't been at this as long as most (only about a year), but I really like your solve and think it's the best one out there. I believe you have the correct spot. Thank you for posting it!

[Redneck Girl]

I checked out the area using the GPS coordinated that Kidd provided. It appears to be very close to the location Forrest described in Ch 5 of TFTW:

“Occasionally I’d ride my bike into Yellowstone Park to a spot about twenty miles from town where a seldom-used dirt road turned right off the main drag. From there it was about a mile down the road to the Firehole River. Just before the river, there on the right, was a green geyser pool which spilled and spewed a small streamlet of boiling water that ran downhill for about fifty feet and into the cold river.”

This was the spot where Forrest liked to bathe naked in the river. I recall that someone on Dals’ site (maybe it was even Dal himself) suggested that “treasures bold” referred to being naked.

Did you ever find the green geyser pool? Do you think Forrest would have come this close to describing his special spot in one of his books? I don’t know what to think.

[GoldenFrog]

I checked out the area using the GPS coordinated that Kidd provided. It appears to be very close to the location Forrest described in Ch 5 of TFTW:

“Occasionally I’d ride my bike into Yellowstone Park to a spot about twenty miles from town where a seldom-used dirt road turned right off the main drag. From there it was about a mile down the road to the Firehole River. Just before the river, there on the right, was a green geyser pool which spilled and spewed a small streamlet of boiling water that ran downhill for about fifty feet and into the cold river.”

This was the spot where Forrest liked to bathe naked in the river. I recall that someone on Dals’ site (maybe it was even Dal himself) suggested that “treasures bold” referred to being naked.

Did you ever find the green geyser pool? Do you think Forrest would have come this close to describing his special spot in one of his books? I don’t know what to think.

You're exactly right, he was describing this very spot... And although the road is paved now, everything is still exactly as he described...

This is his spot...

[GoldenFrog]

I haven't been at this as long as most (only about a year), but I really like your solve and think it's the best one out there. I believe you have the correct spot. Thank you for posting it!

Yea, apparently I missed it by one day. Am I part of the true story? Idk, but I think truth matters...

Maybe one day we'll see, maybe not...

[June Did Everything Right]

Yea, apparently I missed it by one day. Am I part of the true story? Idk, but I think truth matters...

Maybe one day we'll see, maybe not...

I remember liking this solve when you shared it months ago, especially the photos. I have a few reservations because of "ideas" but it's still pretty fun for a solve. The bear makes me laugh a little, but not in a bad way. In a way that almost seems like "That would be a great home of Brown." I mean, it might be my favorite one so far. I can't remember exactly what Jack told me about the clues but it was like "They all exist in their natural environment." That's a natural environment and a natural environment for Grizzlies. And don't you kind of have to think that a guy who sold paintings and saw shit in his bathroom tiles would do something like this? It's pretty good. And if not real solve emerges, I will visit your spot when I get the chance. Looks great.

[GoldenFrog]

I remember liking this solve when you shared it months ago, especially the photos. I have a few reservations because of "ideas" but it's still pretty fun for a solve. The bear makes me laugh a little, but not in a bad way. In a way that almost seems like "That would be a great home of Brown." I mean, it might be my favorite one so far. I can't remember exactly what Jack told me about the clues but it was like "They all exist in their natural environment." That's a natural environment and a natural environment for Grizzlies. And don't you kind of have to think that a guy who sold paintings and saw shit in his bathroom tiles would do something like this? It's pretty good. And if not real solve emerges, I will visit your spot when I get the chance. Looks great.

You remind me of f words in scrapbook 116 when you said the bear makes you laugh a little, "When mother nature made the tiles in my shower she probably giggled, knowing I’d be embarrassed. Everywhere I look I see another face staring at me so I don’t dare shower without my jeans on. I never have any privacy anymore. f."

If you notice, the bear looks to be grinning...



It also reminds me of the story of Dr. Coulter when the bear was grinning back at him from across the river. He was part of the Lewis and Clark adventure and there are really interesting parrels to f's hunt and this story about Dr. Coulter. Of course, f was well familiar with this story as well...

Here is a snippet discussing him: You can find the rest of the story here: 'Lewis & Clark'

"In September of 1889, Tazewell Woody (Theodore Roosevelt’s hunting guide), John H. Dewing (also a hunting guide), and I, found on the left side of Coulter Creek, some fifty feet from the water and about three quarters of a mile above the creek’s mouth, a large pine tree on which was a deeply indented blaze, which after being cleared of sap and loose bark was found to consist of a cross thus ‘X’ (some five inches in height), and, under it, the initials ‘JC’ (each some four inches in height).

The blaze appeared to these training hunting guides, so they stated to me, to be approximately eighty years old.

They refused to fell the tree and so obtain the exact age of the blaze because they said they guessed the blaze had been made by Colter himself.

The find was reported to the Government authorities, and the tree was cut down by them in 1889 or 1890, in order that the blazed section might be installed in a museum, but as I was told in the autumn of 1890 by the then superintendent of the Yellowstone Park, the blazed section had been lost in transit. [11]

It seems more likely that the blaze Rollins found was related to the naming of the nearby stream. Coulter Creek, which flows into Snake River near the south boundary of the park, was named for John Merle Coulter, a botanist with the Hayden Survey, because of an amusing incident which occurred there. One of Dr. Coulter’s students at the University of Chicago, where he taught botany in later years, kindly furnished the park with the eminent botanist’s own version of the event, as recorded in a classroom notebook in 1922. The student says:

Dr. Coulter was fishing one day on the bank of a stream when he felt a slap on the shoulder and turned expecting to see one of his companions, but there was a large, black bear. Coulter plunged in and swam across the stream, then looking around saw that the bear had not followed, but was back there grinning at him. The party called this stream Coulter Creek, a name it still bears."

[GoldenFrog]

"The big picture."

[Knowledge]

It is funny how sometime you can't see something like your bear at first.
But once you see it you can't un see it and wonder how the world
does not see it as clear as you.In the pictures from the scrapbook
it took me some time to find what Forrest was talking about.
But now as soon as I look at it I see what Forrest did.