Who doesn’t love a treasure hunt? Scavenger hunts, solving puzzles, decoding messages and following clues in paintings also rank right up there with good times, at least in my opinion.
For me, it all started with rock-hunting and collecting. The thrill of finding an amazing rock began at the age of 11. I was on a Girl Scout hike up Mount Monadnock, when, at the summit, I found a piece of garnet in a rock. The garnet was very small and it took forever to chip it out of the matrix, but I found my first treasure.
I suspect if you have had a similar experience, the elation has never dimmed, and the excitement of the hunt just adds to the delight. So, when I read “Chasing the Thrill: Obsession, Death, and Glory in America’s Most Extraordinary Treasure Hunt” by Daniel Barbarisi, I knew he was a kindred spirit.
The treasure hunt Barbarisi focuses on is Forrest Fenn’s. Undoubtedly the most highly publicized treasure hunt in America’s history, this cache was valued at close to $2 million. Fenn, a former fighter pilot in Vietnam, lead a charmed life of adventure, exploration and survival against all odds. However, at one point he was given just a few months to live by an oncologist who had diagnosed him with bladder cancer. Fenn, who by that time had amassed great wealth as an art and antiquities dealer, didn’t want to leave this life without a legacy, and he decided to put his favorite treasures in a wooden box, hide the box somewhere in the Southwest and when he was near the end, lie down next to his box and take a few pills.
Of course, he didn’t just want to end it there. He wrote a memoir, and then another, followed by a third and finally a cryptic poem that, once solved, would reveal the location of the treasure – and presumably his remains. But, into every elaborate plan there comes a glitch. Fenn lived!
Now he had a treasure in a box, somewhere in the great Southwest and a clean bill of health from a stunned oncologist, and thinker-out-of-the-box that he was, a need to keep that legacy going. Publicity, both local and eventually national, got thousands of people excited and the chase was on.
Barbarisi, a reporter from Boston, became one of the hunters. He really tried to remain objective and just narrate the hunt, but he caught treasure fever halfway through and it took a while to regain his perspective. This eventually happened, and his analysis of this progress is quite interesting.
This book goes far beyond Fenn’s treasure though. Barbarisi traces hunts from Coronado to Oak Island just to spice things up, as well as introduce us to current hunts by discussing veteran Fenn treasure hunter and blogger Jenny Kile.
Kile became so enamored with treasure hunts, after her involvement with Fenn, that she began investigating other hunts around the country and wrote about them in her book “Armchair Treasure Hunts: The Quest for Hidden Treasures,” as well as her blog, mysteriouswritings.com. The blog started out as a guide to all things Fenn, before it evolved into a detailed account of current attempts at solving treasure quests set up along the lines of Forrest Fenn.
The thing about the Fenn treasure – for most, but not all – was the fun of the hunt. Yes, some got carried away; at least three died, and several came close to perishing. However, the majority just wanted to get outside and exercise the body, work out the brain as they tried to solve the puzzle and maybe get the prize.
It was the questing for the prize that spurred on several others, both individuals and companies, to hide their own treasure, write their own puzzle and challenge all comers to solve it. At this time, there are several hunts going on around the country, and Kile has not only given her readers background and instructions on how to access them, she also keeps her blog current for new hunts. Kile also references “The Thrill of the Chase” along with past solves of other hunts, and has embedded codes, ciphers and puzzles in her book that, when deciphered, offers hidden wisdom for other searches.
The Fenn treasure hunt went on for years, and as Kile notes, it sparked so many other hunts across the United States that we almost forget about those ancient treasures that are still waiting for us under the seas.
Barbarisi, fortunately, did not forget. He devoted a chapter to Mel Fisher, the most-famous treasure-hunter of them all. While I had certainly read an account of Fisher’s discoveries in National Geographic many years ago, the typical lack of depth of the narrative didn’t allow me to really get into the full story, and Barbarisi’s chapter only whetted my appetite for more. Fortunately, Jedwin Smith came through with his book “Fatal Treasure: Greed and Death, Emeralds and Gold, and the Obsessive Search for the Legendary Ghost Galleon ATOCHA.”
Smith, much like Barbarisi, is a reporter. He first made contact with Fisher — the famous hunter of Spanish treasure — in the 1980s. Fisher was quite a colorful character. He started out as a chicken farmer in California, got hooked on scuba diving, moved his wife and children to Florida and began searching for sunken Spanish galleons.
In those days, someone walking along a beach in the Florida Keys might actually find a Spanish doubloon washed up on shore after a storm. (For the record — no matter how many Florida beaches I have walked — I just found shells.)
It turns out, in the 1700s, the Spanish king was in a prolonged war and needed an excessive amount of gold, silver and jewels to fund his campaigns. The soldiers, governors and Spanish land-owners in the New World were only too happy to accommodate. This entailed enslaving the natives, robbing them of all they owned and sending the loot back to Spain. Weather prediction (where was Punxsutawney Phil when they needed him?) was rudimentary at best and the yearly fleet of galleons often set sail in the middle of hurricane season. Coupled with top-heavy construction, an overload of cargo (gold is heavy), tons of smuggled silver and nascent navigation skills, several of these vessels went aground during storms. The galleons broke up, spilling millions of dollars’ worth of treasure across the sea floor.
Some salvage efforts on the part of the Spanish were undertaken, but very little was recovered, and legends were born, while the treasure remained hidden, becoming encrusted with coral. Until Fisher came along that is, followed by Smith, and the sensational story of hunting for and finally finding the Nuestra Senora de Atocha — the most-elusive, fateful, legendary, richest galleon of them all. In Smith’s book, history is covered, triumphs and tragedies explained, and background of life in the old (read this as the 1980s) Florida Keys chronicled. As an expansion on Barbarisi’s chapter, I couldn’t ask for better.
My advice? Read the books, get the treasure fever (just a little – it won’t hurt), check the blog for current hunts, try solving one or two from your armchair and experience a little of the thrill of the chase.