My Perspective From Here (Simplified)

[Gunrunner]

As I have this Montana solve
I've guarded all these years,
my secrets aren't worth keeping now
so I'll just leave this here.

Begin a line at Logan Pass
and draw it toward The Canyon towns.
Don't go too far or you'll go past
the lookout tower on Mount Brown.

Thence to the same on Heavens Peak;
you have three points, don't need a fourth,
but note there, too, Swiftcurrent Creek,
and Water-ton (a-way up north).

That fire towers solve the riddle
would seem to me beyond dispute.
Where would he be but "in the middle"?
The Blaze is Forrest's parachute!

The only down from there is straight.
(Do NOT go up there, listen good:
Brave and stupid are different traits;
stay with the grizzlies in the wood.)

If you can solve that final clue
then you will know as well as I,
there's nowhere else this could be true;
this hill is where he chose to die.

So I'm at Peace, for wrong or right,
here on The Crown's a-tired slopes.
I can't adjust these Cannon sights
to hunt Wyoming jackalopes!

And should some day the truth come out,
it really was in Yellowstone,
the explanation leaves no doubt,
the answers to the clues are known,

I'll humbly choke Red herrings down
and wish that they were trout so Brown,
admit my folly in dreams of gold,
curse the Jokers, politely fold,

but just for now I'm holding pat --
I hope you all can understand --
'cause Forrest can eat his musty hat
if I don't have the higher hand.

[Gunrunner]

What would make this location particularly special to Forrest Fenn?

Thank you for the thoughtful question, Old Pilot. I don't think the place itself was special to Forrest in any personal way -- I don't think he whiled away the pleasant hours of his youth there or anything -- I think it was "special" to him in the same way Indulgence was special; it was perfect for what he wanted to do. The right piece of canvas on which to compose his message, so to speak.

It's in the first International Peace Park, in terrain similar to that from which he was rescued in Laos.

I think it's meant to be a thank you to the men in the Candy Ann who rescued him, and a remembrance of those 600 or so forgotten airmen still in Vietnam for whom the Candy Ann never came.

I should say I solved the poem knowing next to nothing about the man Forrest Fenn -- retired Air Force, shot down twice, liked to fish, arrowhead collector, art dealer. That's about it. I didn't have TTOTC, hadn't read any of his writing. I just kind of took him at his word -- "the poem and a good map" and "1,000 years." I figured somebody finding the poem in a few hundred years might not even know who the author was. Personal details about his life weren't important.

I didn't know what the blaze was when I first spotted it, just that it was something manmade that had no business being where it was. I thought at first it was meant to look like one of those buffalo robes I had seen in a magazine article about the treasure hunt. It wasn't until I had read My War For Me that I realized it must be his parachute. After all, I had located it the same way they would have homed in on the locator beacon in his parachute when they rescued him from Laos -- by triangulation -- but he had to call me in using landmarks instead of radio signals, talking in code so he didn't give away his position to the enemy.

It's like a work of art, like a poem or a painting, it makes a statement, triggers an emotion. It's beautiful, but I get a sense of the bitter irony of everybody running all over the Rocky Mountains looking for a box of gold when they should have been looking for the Lost Airman.

I can hardly believe dude hasn't opened that olive jar and read the autobiography.

[Sal O'mander]

That is a wonderful and meaningful solution....
Thank you!

[Gunrunner]

Thank you, Sal O'mander !

[Colorado Cowgirl]

That drives the point home. Thank You!

[thehomeofBrown.com]

This was my favorite solve to read ever. You've mastered the poetry sidequest!

[YY'S]

As I have this Montana solve
I've guarded all these years,
my secrets aren't worth keeping now
so I'll just leave this here.

Begin a line at Logan Pass
and draw it toward The Canyon towns.
Don't go too far or you'll go past
the lookout tower on Mount Brown.

Thence to the same on Heavens Peak;
you have three points, don't need a fourth,
but note there, too, Swiftcurrent Creek,
and Water-ton (a-way up north).

That fire towers solve the riddle
would seem to me beyond dispute.
Where would he be but "in the middle"?
The Blaze is Forrest's parachute!

The only down from there is straight.
(Do NOT go up there, listen good:
Brave and stupid are different traits;
stay with the grizzlies in the wood.)

If you can solve that final clue
then you will know as well as I,
there's nowhere else this could be true;
this hill is where he chose to die.

So I'm at Peace, for wrong or right,
here on The Crown's a-tired slopes.
I can't adjust these Cannon sights
to hunt Wyoming jackalopes!

And should some day the truth come out,
it really was in Yellowstone,
the explanation leaves no doubt,
the answers to the clues are known,

I'll humbly choke Red herrings down
and wish that they were trout so Brown,
admit my folly in dreams of gold,
curse the Jokers, politely fold,

but just for now I'm holding pat --
I hope you all can understand --
'cause Forrest can eat his musty hat
if I don't have the higher hand.

As a Montanan(and 30 minutes from Glaceir) i can appretiate the poem. But i do beleive it was in Yellowstone.

[Gunrunner]

Thank you, Colorado Cowgirl and Rudy!

As a Montanan(and 30 minutes from Glaceir) i can appretiate the poem. But i do beleive it was in Yellowstone.

I think that's just what the locals up there tell everybody, "Nah, it's down in Yellowstone. Go'way." I had a feeling y'all could spot a treasure hunter. I was standing on the side of Going-to-the-Sun Road, looking up at the side of Mount Cannon that I had just gotten back down from, and this girl came sailing by on her bicycle, down toward Avalanche, and as she went by she said back over her shoulder, "I don't tink there's anything up there!"

[Gunrunner]

I had drawn my triangle and found my blaze in the middle, and since the blaze was close to Going-to-the-Sun Road, I switched to Street View to see what it looked like from the road. And, lo and behold, just like every other solve out there, it seems, there was a little creek there that you couldn't paddle up, and a little waterfall hundreds of feet high, just like (to my mind) the little waterfall in My War for Me. And since it was the side of Mount Cannon, that would do just fine for heavy loads, right? Better than the generic boulders and downfall everybody else had, I thought. So I had it all sussed out.

I was aware of Swiftcurrent Creek, but it was far outside my triangle and I thought the name just coincidentally seemed to be a no-paddle creek, and I had my own no-paddle creek down there at the bottom of Mount Cannon. So I didn't pay it much attention, until I learned there was, perhaps coincidentally, a fire lookout on Swiftcurrent Mountain like the ones on Heavens Peak and Mount Brown that I had used to find the blaze. So I drew a line.

Another coincidence!

[AaBbCcDdEeFf]

As a Montanan(and 30 minutes from Glaceir) i can appretiate the poem. But i do beleive it was in Yellowstone.

You've heard the saying 'have your cake and eat it too'

[AaBbCcDdEeFf]

I remember wanting to go to Going to the Sun road in 2017 but there was a nasty fire (Sprague fire i think is what they were calling it). Then there was another shut down that lasted the whole Summer wasn't there? At any rate, for a long time I thought that a section of that road was the blaze because of the wild curves that you could see on Google maps.

[Gunrunner]

I remember wanting to go to Going to the Sun road in 2017 but there was a nasty fire (Sprague fire i think is what they were calling it). Then there was another shut down that lasted the whole Summer wasn't there? At any rate, for a long time I thought that a section of that road was the blaze because of the wild curves that you could see on Google maps.

Yes, that's right. The Sprague fire was like a manifestation of the ghost in the machine for me. I heard about the treasure hunt on the Nightly News at the end of July 2017. By the end of August I had solved the poem to my own satisfaction and there was nothing left to do but go. I knew there was a fire out there and Sprague rang a bell but I wasn't paying much attention because I was trying to figure out how I was going to get there, and then the fire got bigger and the first week of September they closed the road, and then it snowed so they never opened it back up that year. So I was stuck.

And then I remembered why Sprague rang a bell. The Sprague was a stern-wheeler riverboat docked at Vicksburg, Mississippi, converted to a theater, and when I was a kid I had been there to see a play -- the longest-running melodrama in the United States. The name of the play was "Gold in the Hills," and get this, the subtitle was, "or, the Dead Sister's Secret."

The second person to speak in the play is Barbara, the heroine's younger sister, and these are her lines:

If a body meet a body
Comin' through the rye,
If a body kiss a body
Need a body cry.

Spooky, huh?

Addendum: The Sprague was irreparably damaged by fire in 1974...

[Gunrunner]

I'm sticking with my solve, which involves visual items -- some of which may have been quite symbolic to Forrest, miles away from these triangles.

That's certainly understandable. After five trips (isn't it five?) to my search area I would be pretty heavily invested, too. But check back from time to time. I still have a few more lines to draw and a picture of some (relatively uncommon) purple and yellow flowers that happened to be growing right where we ducked into the woods from Going-to-the-Sun Road and started up the mountain, if you accept scrapbook hints. Speaking of that, does this one mean anything to you?

[Gunrunner]

I don't think people paid enough attention to this.

[AaBbCcDdEeFf]

Regarding the treasure not associated with a structure he meant it's not above (on roof), below or inside of a structure nor is the chest measured from a structure (like a building) but believe me on this, structures have everything to do with the poem including the final spot.