Contact: Lance Hendrickson, Esq.
231.375.7533
lancechendrickson@yahoo.com
An Elusive Gold Claim
I don’t travel much anymore. Mostly because like countless other American 40-somethings, I
effectively fell out of the economy between ’09 and ’11, and Missouri’s lowest-in-the-nation
unemployment benefits wouldn’t have covered gas between Joplin and Branson. (Thanks again,
Missouri.) The final pittances barely paid for a storage unit in Kansas City and a two-suitcase trail-oftears slog back home to Michigan. Lo these four years later, just about the only expeditions I undertake
are to the gas station every 30 hours for a box of Phillip Morris’ instant (albeit temporary) stressrelievers. So every day, here I am.
But back when I was representing casinos (and shelling out for dry cleaning and tips instead of
smokes), I was in the friendly skies and on the road all the time. Every week brought a new string of carrental agents and hotel desk clerks and bartenders. And except for one incongruous blonde slinging
hooch at a BJ dealers’ hangout in Niagara Falls, I don’t recall any one of them in particular. I just
remember forgiving a lot of trespasses. They generally were young, and not exactly superstars at what
they did. That wasn’t an issue because truthfully, I didn’t really want to pay my share of what it’d have
cost those companies to hire more highly-skilled (or even more sane) workers to swipe my credit cards
and hand me keys and pour me more Stoli.
So late this past May as I battled my way out of an orange-and-blue 500-mph flying steerage car
and over to the neighboring continent where Denver International’s exiled its rental-car lots, I didn’t
expect to find any Rhodes scholars behind the counter.
Thing was, though, I did. Well, maybe I did -- I didn’t inquire specifically. I was busy watching
the guy from Bu-szhey (the fine French rental-car company) smoothly size me up. I wasn’t a perketyperk member, I was dressed from Goodwill’s sale rack, and I’d booked a bargain-basement compact-car
deal on the web. Luggage? A backpack and a years-old laptop case. No iPad, no iPod, no iNothing. So
heck, no, this guy couldn’t find me a Focus or a Cruise anywhere out there in that sea of sheet metal. He
was assigning me the VW Beetle nobody else wanted either. It was a compact, it had wheels, and that
was it, sir. (Cue the big “I dare you to yap off and walk your raggedy Detroit Lions cap half a mile over to
Dent-a-Prize” smile.)
Unless I wanted to upgrade to a SUV for just a few bucks more, that is. I would come to regret
my OPEC-inspired “pass” on that offer later. I’ll get to that.
Anyway, Mr. Rental Dude was a bright guy. He would’ve fit right in selling Audis in some tony
suburb with lots of hills and gates and hyphenated street names. Come to think of it, everybody I’d
encountered in a polyester uniform since I boarded the Chicago-bound Amtrak should’ve been doing
something else/better/more complicated. They were all smart. Articulate. Competent. Educated. Oldish. Obviously and terribly overqualified. Not much like I remember from my frequent-flyer and hotelbar years. And on pick-an-unemployed-day from about ’13 forward, I’d have gladly signed up for any of
their jobs, too, if “JD” didn’t mean the same thing as “felon” to so many HR departments.
1
I shut up and signed for the Beetle, and I thought about all of that as I walked out to the “good
luck, buddy” row in the rental lot and tried the ignition. “Click. Ding… Ding…” Granola-fed Denver FM
radio? Check. And the fan worked. But no “vroom.” Crap. What’d I have to do? Go around front and
crank this catbox by hand? No, apparently my great-grandfather’s people over in Wolfsburg Germany
thought I should be standing on the brake when I turned the key. That seemed totally, utterly pointless
-- until I’d cleared the (again, overqualified) lot attendant and pointed the hood toward I-70.
Yea and verily, it was revealed to me that the new Volkswagen Beetle has three throttle
positions: “indifference,” “bog-bog-stall” until the pedal’s halfway down, and “zhaa-wheeeEEEEE!”
thereafter. Or whenever – position #3’s precise location apparently was designed to be a surprise. At a
given moment the Beetle’s powertrain is either AWOL or turning hell-bent for leather, and there’s no
putting the little rapscallion in timeout to get it to understand reason or moderation.
Climbing up out of Denver the Beetle chewed up the highway and no small part of the Rockies
like it was mad at something. Frustrated, maybe. Or corrosively desperate, without a focus or a useful
answer. It seemed to believe it was supposed to be a rally car like its ancestor Herbie the Love Bug. But
then here it’d found itself, whoring out to Bu-szhey Rent-a-Car and schlepping the fourth Trailer Park
Boy (who was silly enough to cop to being a lawyer) up into some mountains instead. So the only thing
for it to do was to bang out the miles like a demon and hope somebody from the SCCA might notice.
That was fine by me. I could identify; I should’ve been doing something else, too. And ‘long
about Frisco I started to understand that this little car, with all its quirks and its sleeve-worn attitude,
would be a fitting partner on the adventure ahead. Most of it, anyhow.
See, for about two years I’d been hearing that there was a troublemaker out there in the Rocky
Mountains somewhere north of Santa Fe. And with nothing better to do, I’d decided to half-ass hobo it
on out to some of the lower 48’s stiffest boonies with my backpack and my Reeboks (and, now, with a
bipolar Volkswagen) so I could sack up, put out my cig, and go get the sonofabitch.
*
34-year-old mom Chanon Thompson of Texas made herself some trouble back in ’13 when she
wandered several miles into the 33,000-acre Bandelier National Monument in New Mexico and got lost.
She needed three aircraft, various experts and a team of search dogs to get back home breathing. Also
in ’13 a reportedly-unidentified (to his doubtless gratitude) man got himself charged with a
misdemeanor in New Mexico for damaging a memorial marker near state game commission property.
Those and other reported stupid human tricks like digging up outhouses and grave sites are, of
course, properly pinned to their performers. (Preferably to their chests, next to the notes saying it’s
their turn to bring snacks to school.) But like any self-respecting Contra kidnapping or unprovoked war
in the –East (Middle, Far, whatever), there’s one rich old white guy at the root of the mischief who’s
promising overnight prosperity and professing nothing but altruistic motives for green-lighting the
whole shebang. In this case, it’s New Mexico art dealer/collector/author Forrest Fenn.
Mr. Fenn has claimed in his self-published memoir The Thrill of the Chase, and on NBC’s Today
Show, and in USA Today, and on every ham radio station and YouTube-pipelined bookstore appearance
you can shake a walking stick at, that he took somewhere between $1 million and $3 million worth of
gold and jewels and other jim-cracks and gewgaws, packed the lot into a bronze chest and then, uh, just
2
hid it outdoors (or maybe hucked it out the car window) someplace. He also tells everybody who’ll
listen that nine clues in a poem he wrote – and, spoiler alert: the poem just so happens to be in his book
-- will lead searchers to the chest.
When I first read the story I was reminded of the time a few of us kids told the home-schooled
neighbor boys that one of our dads had accidentally flushed a $25 bill, and so it must’ve ended up out in
the cesspool. (This was before I read that some Fenn-treasure hunters have been digging up outhouses,
mind you.) That’s no typo: a $25 bill. And yeah, much to our delight, little Sam and his brother what’shis-name scooped and bailed and poked around in the putrid muck with a garden rake for a good hour.
I don’t know if they wound up with staph infections. I do know their family moved out west to join
some cult not long afterwards. I do not know if they were the ones later caught digging up outhouses in
search of the Fenn treasure, but now I’m dying to try and find out one of these days.
Anyhow, I didn’t cotton to ol’ Forrest’s tale at first, in the way that I don’t much care for belly
dancers in full regalia. The outfits are too opaque and gauzy and such. But then every couple months
he’d go back on TV and drop a new hint. “The treasure’s not associated with any structure.” “The
treasure’s wet.” “The treasure’s not in Utah or Idaho.” “The treasure’s not in a graveyard.” “The
treasure’s located in the Rockies above 5,000 feet.” And my personal favorite: “[t]he treasure’s more
than 300 miles west of Toledo.”
Well, thanks for clearing that last point up for us, old bean. Then again I suppose if the Rockies
did start 300 miles west of Toledo, the good people of Missouri mightn’t have been so tightfisted with
the spit-in-a-gale unemployment payments I’d maxed out. Be that as it may, just like when those belly
dancers spin around and shuck off a veil or two or three, my interest perked up with every discard.
Before long I was hooked. I had to learn more about that chest. (What? I should’ve said “box?”)
Lacking a crystal ball or data from the NSA’s phone taps, I started with the next best thing: el
Google-o. I downloaded what I could for free like a college student with a new iPod. First search? The
poem.
The Poem [Yeah, that’s how it starts.]
This poem written by Forrest Fenn contains nine clues that if followed precisely, will
lead to the end of his rainbow and the treasure. Happy Hunting!
My first impression: “what, this guy’s so rich he owns his own rainbow? Must be nice.”
As I have gone alone in there
And with my treasures bold,
I can keep my secret where,
And hint of riches new and old.
“Useless,” I thought. “Come on, Forrest. What’re you, pricing your book by the word? Get to
the clues, man.” He soon did.
Begin it where warm waters halt
And take it in the canyon down,
Not far, but too far to walk.
Put in below the home of Brown.
3
Well, now he was talking. I still had no idea how anybody could’ve pulled “outhouse” or “grave”
out of any of that. Then again, some of you got something naughty out of “chest” and “box” above, and
if I squinted (or leered), I imagined one could conjure up some quasi-Kama Sutra reference in there. So
maybe it was some kind of iambic Rorschach test? There was more:
From there it's no place for the meek,
The end is ever drawing nigh;
There'll be no paddle up your creek,
Just heavy loads and water high.
At this point I was still thinking this treasure yarn was the “heavy load.” After several years of
felony defense work and commercial litigation, that tends to be my first instinct whenever a rich guy
spouts off. I kept reading:
If you've been wise and found the blaze,
Look quickly down, your quest to cease,
But tarry scant with marvel gaze,
Just take the chest and go in peace.
I found that to be good advice. “If you find this thing, you’d better beat feet for your Beetle and
‘zhaa-wheeeEEEEE!’ for parts unknown.”
Mr. Fenn speaks with some authority on this point. Back in June of ‘09 the FBI and the Bureau
of Land Management wrapped up a years-long probe into archeological pillaging and illegal artifact
trafficking in the four corners area. Undercover investigators bought 256 illegal artifacts worth more
than $335,000. A couple dozen people were indicted and 12 collectors’ homes were searched, including
Fenn’s place in Santa Fe. Two suspects committed suicide. One was charged with threatening an
informant’s life. Fenn wasn’t charged, and his lawyer was quoted saying “… only a few objects were
seized from [Fenn’s] collection.” Good to hear he didn’t break the “too many” rule, I guess.
So why is it that I must go
And leave my trove for all to seek?
The answer I already know,
I've done it tired, and now I'm weak.
I still can’t say why he (supposedly) did this. Obviously it wasn’t a condition of the probation he
didn’t get. Then again, if this bling heap really was in a box two feet off Grizzly Adams’ curtilage in the
mountains someplace, the feds sure wouldn’t ever be finding it at Fenn’s house in Santa Fe, would they?
Forrest hadn’t recommended using oven mitts to pick it up or anything, so I read the last stanza:
So hear me all and listen good,
Your effort will be worth the cold.
If you are brave and in the wood
I give you title to the gold.
That was it. From Fenn, that is.
4
If one isn’t too picky about considerations like “logic” or “merit,” there’s a lot more out there on
the web to read. It doesn’t take many clicks to see that an entire global Fenn-treasure subculture has
sprung up. Blogs about the book. Blogs about where the treasure must be. Blogs about blogs about
where the treasure must be. People pitching wacked-out numerology theories. Women venting about
husbands blowing their families’ cash on searches. The semi-slick and fully-lazy, running faux contests
for the best poem interpretation. People mooching for trip sponsors. I even read where one sneaky
Pete with an allegedly crappy pickup was asking if Forrest would come pick him up and take him the rest
of the way if said crappy pickup were to break down on the wily trickster’s treasure-hunting expedition.
All this screed conveyed a sense of curiosity and adventure. But there were also undeniable
notes of desperation sprinkled in. Many of these folks were already in dire straits, and then along came
this story about $3 million they could just go pick up. It was their big chance, right? Their lives could be
what they were always supposed to have been if only somebody would help them solve the riddle, or
maybe front them gas money via PayPal.
Then again, maybe I brought some that to the text myself? Hard telling. Sharp guy, that
Rorschach.
When I read the umpteenth blog post claiming that “where warm waters halt” had to be a
geyser up in Yellowstone because Forrest used to go there as a boy, and “home of Brown” had to refer
to “trout” because Fenn likes to fish, my patience meter redlined. “Zhaa-wheeeEEEEE!” I mean, “warm
waters” don’t “halt” at a geyser – they blast up out of the ground at high velocity. These Einsteins were
the searchers? I didn’t wonder why I can’t leave anything in a locked car in Detroit for ten minutes but
this treasure chest has sat unguarded for years. The real hustlers were out carrying crowbars in parking
lots after dark, not reading Fenn’s book and looking for the start of the Rockies on the outskirts of
Champaign, Illinois. This whole deal looked to me like a clown show from beginning to rainbow’s end.
But then I remembered that in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. At one of my
casino jobs I once figured out exactly which New York mafia family still controls distribution for a certain
brand of booze. Whatever every company in America might’ve been saying about my job applications
(and to date that’s always included a resounding “no”) I do have serious research skills. And this Fenn
guy wasn’t concealing Jimmy Hoffa; he was in People, announcing clues. It had to be easier to find this
thing than to find employment in Michigan, right?
So Lord help me, I started searching too. In earnest.
*
A click here, a click there, and I found out that after leaving the Air Force Mr. Fenn moved to
Santa Fe and started a gallery, where he dealt in southwestern art and various items one certainly
doesn’t, nooooo nooo, dig up from Indian burial sites. He was diagnosed with cancer, sought treatment,
and decided to stash his treasure thereafter. But somewhere between being shot down in ‘nam twice
and opening his tony turquoise emporium, he’d worked for the United States Forest Service. He wasn’t
saying when. Hm.
Going back to the poem, I opted against “geyser” and “outhouse,” and I decided that “warm
waters” most often “halt” in the Rockies north of Santa Fe at natural hot springs. I also figured no crafty
leprechauns had talked Fenn into buying a rainbow after all, and his use of that word was no accident.
So I wondered: how many “Rainbow Hot Springs” could there be? I quickly found two. Of those, one sat
5
in a canyon at the end of a U.S. Forest Service trail unofficially dubbed “Rainbow Trail” by the locals
(though it’s called “West Fork Trail” on USFS maps). It wasn’t in New Mexico where the grave diggers
were looking, and where that state’s department of tourism has been producing YouTube videos
(starring Fenn, natch) to bring in even more privy spelunkers. It was in Colorado, just outside Pagosa
Springs and about 150 miles northwest of Santa Fe in the rockiest of the Rockies.
“Decent place to start,” I thought. But, then, who was this “Brown” with the “home?” The
Einsteins on the search blogs were all crowing about brown trout and brown bears (and turds – I can-not
get over those outhouse diggers). But I knew from my traveling days that Pagosa Springs isn’t very big.
It only takes about 400 votes to be elected Mayor. Hence, there wouldn’t be many Browns to weed
through. I soon learned they’re either well-behaved or boring, inasmuch as very few make the
newspapers.
Two more clicks and I found the one local Brown who did make the papers (including the New
York Times and the Wall Street Journal). A lot. David Jennings Brown, Sr. And it was because of his
home. See, it’s not just a home. When Brown moved to town in 1993 with his new booty (and that is
not a reference to the second wife he married that year) amassed from doing the real-estate deals that
produced Silicon Valley, he built the 3200-acre Bootjack Ranch. In legal terms, it’s giiii-gungus. In fact
it’s world famous for being so gigungus. I didn’t Google “Kublai Khan,” but this joint could’ve given
Xanadu a run for its money. And I wouldn’t exactly stack Fenn up next to Samuel Taylor Coleridge as a
poet (though he might’ve cribed some from Coleridge’s rhyme scheme). Then again, inspiration’s a
funny thing. Coleridge got his from opium. Fenn pointedly isn’t saying where his came from, except
maybe, I thought, where the poem tells us “I’ve done it tired, and now I’m weak.” Uh, huh.
But I digress. Back to the Bootjack Ranch. Finding it wasn’t much like looking for a needle in a
haystack; the darned thing stretches halfway from Durango to South Park. More precisely, it’s situated
right up against the San Juan National Forest, and directly “below,” in altitude and latitude, the canyon
where Rainbow Hot Springs is.
Oh, boy.
I started clicking and reading more often and, truth be told, not filling out quite so many
doomed McDonald’s apps. I wanted to know: were Brown and Fenn connected? I never could tie them
up directly. But I learned that Brown contracted cancer too, and he got himself onto the Advisory Board
to the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale. I’ve no idea where Fenn was treated for cancer, but I do know that if I
lived in Santa Fe, I contracted cancer, and I was rich enough to pitch $3 million out the car window, I’d
hotfoot it for Mayo toot-sweet (and I don’t mean the cold one in Minnesota).
I also learned that not quite a year after David’s passing in ’13, the Brown family had Sotheby’s
auction off a “… collection of American Indian works and Western Art…” for, you know, chump change:
$1.25 million. Oh, reeeaaally. So, I mean, yeah, Brown could’ve piled up a million bucks’ worth of
western art & Indian artifacts without ever darkening the door at Fenn’s gallery down the road in Santa
Fe. But seriously? Nah. These rich cowboy-artsy cats, I supposed, knew each other one way or another.
Minimally, Fenn knew about the Bootjack Ranch parked right next to the expanse managed by his
former employer the U.S. Forest Service. Outhouse, indeed – this, I thought, was Forrest’s “home of
Brown.”
6
Now, the Fenns and the Browns of this world don’t know much about being broke. I sure do. I’d
write a dissertation on it if I could afford another ink cartridge for the printer. And one key to being a
successful failure is this: you don’t get yourself in any trouble it’ll cost money to fix, ‘cause we indigents
can’t make bail on so much as an impressive speeding ticket. $3 million is a powerful incentive to spin
the Wheel of Mischief and see what happens. But even if all this gold actually was at the bottom of the
waterfall just downstream (and up a non-navigable creek) from Rainbow Hot Springs where I’d pegged
it, I spotted an issue that stood to leave me not only broke, but in the hoosegow to stay.
According to every map I found, that was federal land. And you can’t just go grab stuff up off
federal land, right? Look at what happened to all those other Indiana Jones-type guys back in ’09. With
my luck, some park ranger would leave off chasing Yogi Bear and be standing there waiting for me when
I got back from the top of Rainbow Trail all loaded-down with 40 clinking pounds of financial security.
I stewed on that for about six hours’ worth of smokes and beers. Then I theorized that Forrest
must’ve known the rules when he hid the treasure. I also knew he had at least one lawyer he could call.
I thought, “gee, if only I had the bucks to call a… wait! I’m a lawyer, right? Crack a book already, Lance!”
So I did. And voila! Through the crust on the screen of my seven-year-old Dell, the answer appeared.
Wouldn’t you know it, “federal land” isn’t all “federal land.” There are “national forests,” and
there are “national wildernesses.” (Plus near Pagosa Springs you’ll find oddly-named “Congressionally
Designated Areas,” whatever the hell those are.) Back to the map I went. Sure enough – Rainbow Trail
begins in the San Juan National Forest, but it terminates (near the hot springs and that waterfall) within
what’s called the Weminuche Wilderness Area. Same woods, same trail, but different rules. And who
would know that better than a former USFS employee and avid pot-hunter like Forrest Fenn?
That was good enough for me. I’d convinced myself that I had a legitimate crack at $3 million
bucks. Time to go, man. But like the title of Fenn’s book, Pagosa Springs surely was “too far to walk”
from West Michigan; it was also “too many connecting flights” from anywhere for my no-budget. As
were Santa Fe and Albuquerque. For that matter so was the air hub in Chicago, unless I spent half a day
slogging there via Amtrak. I didn’t see much future for me in hanging around travel plazas hoping to
make new trucker friends, so that’d have to be my itinerary: a train to Chicago, an ungodly-hour sardinecan flight to Denver, and then pedal-it-myself rental wheels to the trailhead.
*
Save for the occasional fleeting glimpse of the big lake, there’s nothing beautiful about the train
ride from Michigan to Chicago. Unless you’re turned on by a stark 3-D reminder of how far America’s
fallen these past 30 years, I suppose. Out the window (which is where I was looking to avoid the smelly,
oversized lout who’d taken up half of my train seat too) I just saw interminable decrepit empty steel
mills and studiously-ignored environmental catastrophes, interspersed with the most desperate poohole gambling halls I’ve ever seen in my life. Plus slums. On my “buy the cheapest and wait ‘til
doomsday” travel schedule, I had plenty of time between boarding calls to ponder how it all
interrelated.
But five minutes after I survived a CAFO-packed flight followed by automotive jujitsu in a VW
with impulse-control issues through Denver’s morning commute, all that crumbling and clamoring and
deteriorating and failing back east was forgotten. Shazam. (Come to think of it, that’s probably why
trust-funders spend so much time in places like Aspen.) The drive through the Rockies in May was
7
breathtaking. Or, breath-giving; it was so beautiful, I kept forgetting to stop and smoke. The windshield
brought me only alpine astonishment, and somewhere between Copper Mountain and Leadville the
boot prints on my neck from creditors X and Y and Sallie Mae began to heal up and disappear. By Buena
Vista I’d just about lost track of my own name. Even the Beetle cooled out a bit. It mattered naught to
me that the Marconi-era car radio sounded like a compulsive grandma’s third hour with the electric
mixer going top-speed because she just… couldn’t… get… the chocolate… chips… to even out perfectly in
the cookie batter. I never wanted that drive to end. I’d do it again every day if I could.
Even as I barreled through isolated little burgs like Saguache and Del Norte and I piled up
brilliant Hi-Def memories of 14,000-foot peaks scattered blithely about, my attention kept finding its
way to the money. After taxes and debts $3 million wouldn’t make me a one-percenter. It might,
though, I hoped, allow me to feel less like one of the guys by the off-ramps with the cardboard signs,
and more like one of the guys running the cardboard factory. And it was already mine. I knew right
where this better future was. All I had to do was finish blowing my last few real dollars, possibly fend off
a bear or six, risk my life scrambling around mucho-miles out in a literal wilderness, and hope that rich
Mr. Fenn was telling the truth (and, thus, cementing his legacy as one of the coolest individuals ever
born) as opposed to pulling the world’s collective leg (and, thus, proving himself to be a jackoff of
Nixonian proportions).
That life-risking part arrived earlier than I’d planned. The Beetle made short work of U.S. 160
and hauled me up Wolf Creek Pass to the point where, in 2005, the road engineers just said “ahhh,
screw it” and punched a tunnel through the mountain instead of maintaining the previous route –
apparently it’d been a goat path or some such. Thing was, the weather changes with altitude in
Colorado. By 10,863 feet a sunny May afternoon had turned into a pissing-down thunder-sleet storm on
full blast. And that would’ve been fine, had the tunnel not been closed for repair when I got there.
Even that would’ve been fine, had the presumably-formerly-paved goat path bypass not consisted
mostly of slick clay, loose rocks, construction detritus, and chuckholes.
Guardrail, you might ask? Noooo, no. Seems that technology hasn’t yet reached western
Colorado. So I had pipeline-thick lightning pummeling the mountaintops mercilessly not far to my left,
enough new sleet blanketing the goat path to run Santa’s sleigh, and only about 18 inches of rocky
grease-dirt separating my starboard-side tires from a Wile E. Coyote-style plummet. I motored carefully,
and I reminded the Beetle’s engine that if it lit off and went “zhaa-wheeeEEEEE!” before I navigated us
back to the pavement, it would be the first thing to dent the bottom of the ravine 20 stories below.
Fortunately it saw the logic in that, and the remainder of the 3700-foot, hairpin-curved, 6.8%-grade
descent to Pagosa Springs passed without my executor having to offer any sheepish explanations to the
overqualified Bu-szhey rep back in Denver.
It was sunny again below 8000 feet, but too late in the afternoon to make for the gold. I
could’ve reached it before the sun went down. On the other hand there weren’t going to be any
streetlights on Rainbow Trail coming back, and the woodland carnivores hadn’t signed any treaties with
the feds that I’d ever heard of. The only thing to do was go check in at the Barelyroofed Hotel (no easy
feat that – how does a “165” street address translate to “four miles west of town?”), go search out a
brewpub, and cadge up something to eat.
Starting about 25 feet above the pavement Pagosa Springs proper is a wonder of a place to be.
Picturesque mountains and infinite skies surround it for 360 degrees. From 25 feet to the ground? It’s
more of an “I wonder…” place to be, as in “I wonder why somebody doesn’t fill a few of these vertebrae8
cracking potholes,” or “I wonder why they quit selling beer at 10:00 pm on weeknights,” or “I wonder
where they got these 60-zillion ‘NO TRESPASSING’ signs?” I swear the good people of Pagosa Springs
fear trespassers almost as much as they fear decent pavement.
Otherwise though, the locals themselves are really friendly. But I wouldn’t call them great at,
say, zoning (I suspect their ordinance just says “builld whatever you want up against U.S. 160”). Or at
naming things. One nearby mountain is called “Quien Sabe,” [“Who Knows”]. One trail’s called
“Fourmile Trail” (leading, of course, to “Fourmile Falls” about, uh, four miles up the trail). One lake is
just named “Fish Lake.” Those last three at least, I could understand. I had no ready explanation for
“Nipple Mountain.” Here’s all this geological poetry dominating every horizon, and Beavis and/or
Butthead won the “name the mountain” contest with “Nipple?” Ah, me.
There were a few more Pagosa Springs wonders to see before bedtime. At dinner I passed on
an offered fourth locally-brewed (and, thus, both very nice and very inexpensive) draft. I also made no
clumsy pass at the pretty lady sitting next to me at the bar who looked just like (and for all I know,
could’ve been) whoever played the President’s secretary in Air Force One. The Beetle didn’t try to make
any passes of its own volition on the way back to the Barelyroofed, where I turned in before 11:00.
Marvels, all.
Looking back, though, I do wish I’d stayed for that fourth crowd-pleaser and smiled to my right a
time or two. But that first evening, I kept telling myself that I wasn’t there on vacation. This was just a
mining camp; I was there for gold. What’d I, want to lose out to Yosemite Sam by two hours? Did I want
to attempt a high-altitude trail in the wilderness with a hangover? No. I figured I could come back
whenever I wanted after I’d finished hiking my sorry ass into the mountains top speed, retrieving Fenn’s
treasure, and dropping it on his doorstep in Santa Fe like a housecat with an unlucky gopher. And if I
didn’t find it? Well, I’d still be needing that beer money awfully badly back in Michigan. So other than
two more hours of studying maps and clues on my laptop at the Barelyroofed, that was it, until the
following crack of dawn.
*
5:30 a.m. found me making a last-minute store run with my little checklist. Beef jerky?
Mountain men ate that all the time, so “check.” Bug spray? “Check.” Bear spray? Even on sale that
was priced at $39.95, and the can looked like it weighed as much as a fire extinguisher. I imagined there
were probably good reasons for its price and size. But I passed. A stick and a state bar i.d. card would
have to suffice to keep me from being eaten. Water? “Check.” Smokes? O.k., o.k., “check.” (I packed
along an empty beer bottle to carry the butts, so get off me already.) Rain poncho? Well, it was actually
cheaper than my original “wear a garbage bag” plan, so “check.”
I pointed the Beetle back up U.S. 160 and headed east. It got in another unbidden “zhaawheeeEEEEE!” or two on the sixty-leven miles comprising the front yard of the Bootjack Ranch, but I
paid it no mind, predicting I’d soon be teaching it what for. Sure enough, I was.
The Forest Service “roads” (haw!) leading up into the wilderness have roughly the same
topography as Verdun circa 1918. Big sharp rocks, ruts so deep there were families in the bottoms
struggling to get out, and I swear that as I circumnavigated one muddy pothole I saw Greg Louganis
squaring up to dive in. I couldn’t tell if I was driving in a national forest or an artillery range. By mile
three the Beetle was whining and promising to behave itself in the future; by mile four, it was
9
threatening to call CPS on me. As we were well beyond cell-phone range I didn’t sweat that last.
Besides, this was how the other rich guys did it. Some put nine-year-olds to work in coal mines. Others
dumped toxic sludge wherever the night was darkest, or desecrated and plundered graves. I was
abusing a rental car. Big deal. It had to be done if I wanted to get my top-shelf privileges back, and that
was that. A deductible here, a bribe there, maybe some legal bills, and I’d come out fine too.
I left the Beetle to lick its wounds and fend for itself at the West Fork Trailhead. That was wellmarked, as was the trail’s first mile or so with God’s own ration of “NO TRESPASSING” signs and fences,
fences, fences. “Whatever,” I wondered, “could be so important to guard seven miles up Beirut Street
from 16 miles out from Pothole Springs? The talking apple trees from Oz? Walter White’s new meth
lab?” I had plenty of time to ponder that and to whistle the yodely-tune from The Price is Right’s “Cliff
Hangers” game as I hiked, because for the first half of the trail it was pretty slow going between all the
“1800 feet uphill” business and the ankle-snapper rocks and the occasional early-spring muck (and, yes,
a couple of smoke breaks).
Was it gorgeous? Certainly. I had the best part of the Rocky Mountains all to myself on a
brilliant sunny spring morning. Could I look up and enjoy all that splendor much? Not without either
falling off a 200-foot cliff or letting the imaginary claim-jumpers who weren’t actually behind me catch
up and steal my future, no. I’d seen every episode of Deadwood. I knew what could happen to me out
there if I didn’t stay on task.
The yodely-tune gave way to the few bars I could remember of Weird Al Yankovic’s “Nature Trail
to Hell” not long after I crossed the first Forest Service-built bridge over the West Fork of the San Juan
River. I was glad for the bridges. There was still some snow left at that altitude, and the runoff had
turned the West Fork from a near-creek (or so I’d read) into one raging sonofagun. The Weminuche
Wilderness was established in 1975, but nobody thought to install bridges until the mid-80s – after a
backpacker drowned at one of the crossings I faced. I knew Fenn didn’t (allegedly) hide his treasure
until either 2009 or ’10, and I knew there wasn’t much ahead of me but a hot spring and a waterfall.
Looking at that torrent, I couldn’t imagine how badly that backpacker must’ve wanted an au naturel
soak.
The river, though, wasn’t the “hell” part. Three or four years after Forrest dropped his 30
million dimes, 91 square miles of “where I was hiking” (plus another 79 square miles nearby) burned for
about six weeks, largely because so many big ol’ trees up there had already been killed by the Spruce
Beetle. I felt worse for the drowned backpacker than I did for the trees. But the immediate problem for
me was that the fire and its aftermath had felled enough board-feet of big timber across the trail (and
everyplace else in and around the canyon) to re-build Noah’s Ark.
USFS had sawn through & moved some, but I guess they don’t have Paul Bunyan on staff
anymore because there were plenty of pine-punji barricades left to do two things: 1) piss me off and/or
stab me through the femoral artery; and 2) make my search 1623% harder. That was assuming another
big conifer didn’t just go ahead and fall on me, I should add; there were some very fresh downers out
there. I could hear lots of creaking up in the breeze as I walked. Pre-fire, I’d have been able to limit my
search to places where a 79- or 80-year-old man reasonably could’ve hauled a 20-lb. load (he’s claimed
he accomplished the stashing in two trips) unaided. Post-fire, that could be defined as “noplace.”
10
But I hadn’t traveled 1500 miles, showed a crazy Volkswagen who’s boss, turned down my best
chance at the horizontal mambo since my divorce, and hiked two years off the end of my life just to take
one look at Yahweh’s Friday-night bonfire pit and go home broke. Nosir. So in I went, and search I did.
At the end of the trail I made for the waterfall post-haste (which under those conditions roughly
translated to “at a snail’s pace, scrambling over pointy logs and stopping every few feet to catch my
breath”). I recited “… [y]our effort will be worth the cold… [i]f you are brave and in the wood…” from
Fenn’s poem like Dorothy Gale chanted “there’s no place like home” a few times. Then I poncho’d up
and I went straight in toward a pile of logs in the fall pool underneath an eleventy-dozen-foot-high
cataract.
“Blablamm-ba-bla-blash-blashhh-blammsshh!” As I moved wood and stone and felt around for
the treasure box, the falling ice-cold water clobbered my head and neck like Hulk Hogan trying to get me
into a suplex or something. And here’s what nobody tells you about waterfalls: they make their own
weather. So once I’d gone “… alone in there…” suddenly there was wind howling around me from
everywhere and nowhere simultaneously, blowing my smart-guy rain poncho smack into my face and
generally making things miserable. I was pretty “brave and in the wood” for a good long while,
splashing and groping and searching (and, yes, cussing a blue streak). But at the bottom of it all I came
up with nothing more valuable than half an old moose antler.
That got me thinking. The current above was strong enough to carry at least this much of that
moose over the ledge and down eleventy-dozen feet to where I was. Those logs and sharp, heavy rocks
I’ve been moving in the fall pool? They probably arrived the same way, without stopping to make any
“beep, beep, beep” noise first like a delivery truck in reverse. I looked up again, and I considered the
semicircular ice bank arcing about 10 feet above my head and looming between me and the cliff behind
the falls. It was melting. And there were chunks out of it the size of microwave ovens. I realized that I
actually could be killed standing there, at any given second. And I’d probably never see or hear it
coming.
For $3 million I risked one more vertical-hurricane scramble through the fall pool and then I
hauled myself back out sans 40 pounds of gold. As I was clamoring up toward where I’d left my
backpack, I heard a particularly loud “splash-kluuuge” in the pool behind me. I didn’t want to speculate
about what that’d been; I was too busy pitying (and mentally kicking) myself. All that way to find zilch. I
couldn’t believe it. I’d been wrong. Come to that, almost literally dead-wrong.
The bottom of that waterfall checks in at 9600 feet above sea level and the altitude was starting
to get to me. So was the five-mile hike over and around obstacles my great-grandfather’s countrymen
would’ve done well to install at Omaha Beach. I picked a nearby log (a simple task), found a seat
between the death spikes (not as easy as it sounds), fished a cigarette out of my pack and tried to
regroup as I lit up. That’s when the marble-sized hail started falling.
I was close enough to the clouds to make friends with them if I wanted; I could see that the
storm wouldn’t last long. But there was nowhere to hide and nothing to do until it quit. So I just sat
there in my stupid flappy poncho, 1500 miles from home, all alone umpteen miles in the wilderness,
four years jobless, broker-than, apparently too dumb to figure out an old man’s poem, wet, cold,
morose, and fresh out of bright ideas.
11
I looked up as soon as I thought the hail wouldn’t take out an eyeball to boot. Way up on the
mountain above the falls I saw a little family (or gang, maybe) of bighorn sheep who’d rolled by to check
out the new guy -- or maybe bum a smoke or try to sell me a nice wool blanket, I didn’t know. They
were on this ledge that couldn’t have been wider than my left foot, and I thought “man, how do they do
that?” Then I thought, “well, they pretty much have to… so they just do.”
That was good enough for me. I stood up, shucked off the poncho, and started plotting a route
down through the death-spikes to the bottom of the creek where it joined the West Fork. I had some
daylight left. I had some energy left. I had a little audience, though I didn’t ever expect the sheep to
applaud; they needed all four feet planted to keep from winding up like that moose. And I still had one
more night booked at the Barelyroofed Hotel. If Mr. Forrest Fenn of the Santa Fe Fenns had squirreled
away all that plunderage anywhere west of Wolf Creek Pass, well, I was either going to find it or… or
something, and that was that.
*
A five-mile empty-handed hike offers a guy plenty of time to think, especially if he’s tired as
anything and dragging feet after several hours of nearly getting himself impaled or drowned or brained
hell-and-gone from the nearest human. On the slog through the gathering dusk back to where I’d left
the Beetle I wasn’t whistling that Price is Right yodely-tune anymore. I was mulling Fenn’s poem harder
than ever and trying to figure out another place to search. But with my long-considered best solution
having left me poor(er), and being cranked-off, tired, and oxygen-deprived, I wasn’t getting anywhere.
Thanks to the paleolithic cable TV service back at the Barelyroofed and Pagosa Springs’ Amishinspired beer-sales laws, I was able to wring a Plan B out of my laptop before I conked out for the night.
So the next crack o’ dawn (o.k., o.k., 9:30 -- 10, tops) the Beetle and I checked out of the Barelyroofed,
got our “zhaa-wheeeEEEEE!” on, and ripped some fresh ruts up the gravel roads north of town toward
the trail to Fourmile Falls.
But after a 3.5-mile forced march back up into the Weminuche Wilderness, more natural beauty
than I’d seen in one place since my last trip to the Gaslamp Quarter in San Diego, and about as much
luck as I’d had there (until I found Patrick’s Pub that is – guys, I’m telling you, if a pretty girl likes blues
and beer, buy her a ring), it was time for more self-flagellation on another late-afternoon 3.5-mile trek
back to the world.
“Damn my granny’s goiter,” I thought. I must’ve been missing something. But as opposed to
“trout” or “bears” or “Cleveland steamers,” the Bootjack Ranch just had to be the correct “home of
Brown.” Didn’t it?
Fenn’s poem was imprinted on my contact lenses by that time. So I went back to it again as I
hiked. “From there it’s no place for the meek…” Hm. Waitasecond. “From there... no place for the
meek.” If Matthew 5:5 (or Beelzebub 6:66 or whatever it was) had any relevance, the treasure was “no
place” on the meek’s inheritance: the Earth. That could’ve been the case -- Fenn could probably afford
space travel. Either that, I mused, or the next leg of the route to the stash wasn’t on land. Water.
Water leaving the Bootjack Ranch. Barring a cesspool big enough to service a 3200-acre palace, that had
to be a reference to the San Juan River.
12
I fish-tailed and dirt-drifted the Beetle back down out of the mountains and on through town
like I’d heard Patrick’s was opening a new location up on Wolf Creek Pass. I could tell that U.S. 160 was
getting pretty tired of me and my meshugenah little car. I wasn’t there to win any popularity contests,
though. I had gasoline, a little daylight, and another idea left. So woe be to anything with a pulse that
dared tread the pavement in front of me; I wasn’t bothering with the brakes. Luckily, nothing did.
At its southern end the Bootjack Ranch hogs up both sides of the road, and it fences off access
to the river from us hoi polloi taxpayers (unless we want to jump in off the highway bridge). I wasn’t
carrying either bolt cutters or bail money. And while I was pretty sure I could’ve extracted an inner tube
from the Beetle, I didn’t know how I’d be able to air it up again for some cold-ass kamikaze float down
the rushing West Fork (much less reinstall it for the trip back to Denver). Thus, I needed to fine-tune my
new solution.
I drove north a ways until I saw a sign pointing to a fire road leading to something called “East
Fork Campground.” I was amazed that the Browns had left a few acres for somebody else to use, so I
cranked the wheel and zagged between the potholes for a mile or so until the ranch ended and there
was a turn-out with one of those USFS map/sign things. I needed a smoke anyway, and I was at the end
of my ideas. So I got out to take a look, and I lit up.
The map said that the East Fork of the San Juan was off to my right; that would’ve been
upstream from where it joins the West Fork below the Bootjack Ranch. The map also said the fire road
continued along the East Fork for about eight miles until it reached two places that stopped me midpuff: Silver Falls, and the terminus of Treasure Trail -- right near one another.
Fenn’s poem didn’t quite set a bush ablaze on the mountain next to me, but it went ringing
through my synapses with similar authority: “There’ll be no paddle up your creek… Just heavy loads and
water high… If you’ve been wise and found the blaze…” I’m still hoping the Marlboro I dropped when I
ran for the car didn’t set a bush on fire either. “Come on, you loco German bastard!” I said as I turned
the key and accidentally triggered the car alarm for about the tenth time. “Let’s go get rich!”
My driving foot was responsible for every “zhaa-wheeeEEEEE!” on the way up the fire road from
there. There were many. Nevertheless, it was slow going overall. The bomb craters and the rocks on
what could only be described as Fred Flintstone’s driveway weren’t kidding around. They’d come to
play. Tackle. But the Beetle was game. Maybe it thought there were talent scouts from the Baja 1000
in the infrequent campers and tents between us and the river; whatever its reasoning, it went like a
water-bug on crack. Together we raced the sunset up the road, gassing and braking and weaving
between and around ruinous hazards, and more-than-twice scattering gravel over the edges of multistory precipices and down into the river below.
Almost five miles along, our luck ran out. Since mile four I’d already been getting out at the
uglier spots to plan routes the car could conquer, foot-by-foot. But then we came to another river. Not
an official river, and I suppose if that hadn’t been peak runoff time it wouldn’t have been there at all.
But there it was. Foaming out of the mountain on the driver’s side, covering the road about twenty feet
wide and deep enough to tempt Jacques Cousteau, and then plunging straight off a cliff was a damned
full-on river. Mark Twain could’ve spent his boyhood on this thing.
I looked again at the Volkswagen’s ground clearance (plus whatever I’d dented into the bottom
by then): nicht sehr. I checked out the brand on the tires: Mightholdair, or some other company I didn’t
13
recognize, and their profile was as lower than J.D. Salinger’s. The tread was thin, too; I’d been autocrossing on the equivalent of a pack of Wrigley’s Doublemint (counting the spare). I thought about $3
million smackers and how I’d learned to drive in jalopies on two-tracks in our own national forest back in
Michigan. I figured I might could ford it, and I knew the Beetle would be down for the try.
But then I took one more long look at the water disappearing over that cliff about two feet from
where the passenger door would be, and I remembered that it takes maybe an inch of water to float
1000 pounds. Fairly exasperated, I grabbed my trusty walking stick from the car and waded in some. I
tried to gauge Old Man River’s actual depth until I realized why I couldn’t see to the bottom: the water
was reasonably deep, but the sun was mostly gone. “No way, Lance,” I thought. “Not tonight, and not
in the Beetle. AAA doesn’t come in a helicopter. A helicopter wouldn’t fit in that gorge. And even if you
had OnStar, the satellite wouldn’t know where this place is.” Motion denied.
It was a long, antsy drive back to Pagosa Springs. It was a longer drive into the last of the sunset
to Durango, where my second-toughest search of the day had turned up the only nearby hotel room
that didn’t cost half of what Fenn might’ve put in that box. I didn’t mind the extra windshield time, and I
let the Beetle “zhaa-wheeeEEEEE!” all it wanted on the postcard-scenic stretch of 160 between Chimney
Rock and Bayfield. I still had one day left to see if I could get my hands on that troublemaker in the
Rockies north of Santa Fe. At that moment, I still liked my chances.
*
The next morning I rented a 4x4 in Durango. Well, I didn’t really – I was sitting at the Dent-aPrize company’s desk in a resort-hotel lobby in Pagosa Springs, and the big four-wheel-drive Chevrolet
I’d already paid for online was in Pagosa Springs too. But the overqualified lady at the computer
terminal couldn’t get the forms to print out where we all were; they kept coming out of the printer in
Durango. I was itching to climb back up into the mountains and out of poverty.
God help me – pimpin’ ain’t easy -- I offered my little buddy the Beetle as collateral. No dice. I
said “how ‘bout you give me the keys, I’ll drive the four-by to Durango and get the paperwork, and I’ll be
back here in, say, five or six hours?” I gathered she’d heard that one before. “Newp.”
I celebrated sixteen birthdays and got signed up for Social Security while I was waiting, but
eventually the agent scrabbled out part of a rental agreement by hand and set me free in a black stonestomper of a SUV. Nominally free, anyway. The hotel parking lot was like some kind of M.C. Escherdesigned maze. So by the time I found the road, I had both a self-guided tour of the whole joint and a
deep sense of relief that I’d been too broke to stay there and have a soak in the famous springs the night
before. Everybody seemed to be coming out of the geo-heated pools horribly fat, and my rump didn’t
need any extra pounds out on the trail.
Back up 160 and then back up the fire road I went. Then eight off-road-road miles, top speed
(except for that river crossing and two more like it I encountered farther up). There was nothing where
Treasure Trail met the road save a wooden sign.
But when I jounced into the clearing at some abandoned USFS buildings near the path to Silver
Falls, my heart leaped into my throat. “If you’ve been wise and found the blaze, look quickly down… if
you are brave and in the wood…” Forrest had said he knew the treasure was wet. And through the
14
windshield I spotted a hand-operated water pump with an inexplicable wooden box sitting next to the
spillway.
There wasn’t a living soul around. I piled out of the big Chevy and made a beeline for that box.
No lock, no latch, just a hinged top. I took a deep breath. I opened it. I looked inside. Nothing. I
reached in and lifted up the plywood on the bottom. Two old candy wrappers and screw-all else.
The nearby woodland creatures learned a few new swear words, and then I searched the little
Forest Service complex like a new FBI agent assigned to Bed-Stuy. And no, I didn’t knock over the
outhouse and check underneath. (I did use it, though. Handy, that.) Zip. From there it was about two
city blocks over to Silver Falls, where I gave the place my special “Rainbow Trail” treatment for two solid
hours and left no stump or stone un-cussed.
I finished with some caves situated about as high as a human could go from there on the
mountain. Finding nothing but bighorn sheep tracks and my own sweat and panic, I stopped and looked
down from my perch near the spray above 8600 feet, very conscious of how few people had ever seen
what I could see from that spot. Ansel Adams was a whiz with that camera, but even his artistry could
never truly do the Rockies justice. Those Coors Light cans should be ashamed for trying. Simply, utterly
awesome.
By that time I was pretty whipped from a couple straight days of putting myself in really
dangerous places (not counting the trip out to Chicago Midway at 3 a.m.). And the local woodland
creatures already knew how disappointed I was to have struck out on plans A through V; I didn’t tell
them twice. But even though cable TV had been pretty good at the hotel in Durango the night before,
I’d spent a few more hours on the Googler, so I had plans W and X all lined up. After one more full
minute of looking miles and miles across the valley at peaks capped with incandescent white snow
that’d probably always been there, I ordered my now-bedraggled Reeboks downhill and made tracks for
the four-by.
No less than three back-country autos pulled up and parked at Silver Falls while I was loading up
to go; that’s a lot for a place about four miles from downtown nowhere. Six or seven different people
got out and started looking here & there in spots I’d already searched. I wondered for a moment
whether I was getting close to the treasure, or whether my guesses were getting to be as bad as
everybody else’s. Then I traded that thought for “how to get this Chevy back off this mountain in one
big piece,” and I headed off on my own one-SUV gymkhana event back down the fire road to start on
Plan W.
*
The sign for Sand Creek Trailhead is a lying sack. There is no “Sand Creek Trail” there – “Little
Sand Creek Trail” is elsewhere. (Thanks again, USFS.) There is a “Sand Creek;” that’s where it meets the
East Fork of the San Juan. There is a “Coal Creek Trail” starting there. I wanted no part of that one
inasmuch as it gains 2800 feet in a right-now hurry (think “walking up a refrigerator door”), and that was
in the wrong direction. The trailhead also anchors a “Quartz Ridge Trail,” which is not to be confused
with “Quartz Creek Trail” farther up the fire road (though of course I was confused as all get-out). Like I
say, naming things isn’t one of the Pagosa Springs community’s strong suits.
15
For all it resembled a pioneer version of the I-10 stack in Phoenix, this little interchange was
where my Plans W and X started. Old Man Fenn’s poem had carved its own ruts into my synapses by
this time, and I knew that leaving Bootjack Ranch (the “… home of Brown…”) by water (“… no place for
the meek…”) was a down-stream trip on the West Fork of the San Juan. The only way to then go “… up
your creek…” would’ve been to route back up the East Fork from their confluence. The East Fork
intersected with Sand Creek where I was standing and scratching my head. Not much farther up, it was
fed by a little dribbler called Tie Creek.
I dusted off my English minor and shifted it into “old-timey” gear. Back in Fenn’s sepia-hued day
a wiseguy was sometimes described as someone who’s “got the sand,” or “got sand enough.” And
“blaze” was another word for “tie” (hence, a loaner jacket at a swanky restaurant’s still called a
“blazer”). So, I imagined, “… If you’ve been wise and found the blaze…” was a reference to Sand Creek
and Tie Creek.
I “… looked quickly down…” No “… wood…” to be “… brave…” in, no treasure. Damn. That left
me two options: 1) march three or four miles (and climb 3000 feet) one way back up into the
kaboonigans on Quartz Ridge Trail past the national-forest/wilderness border to search where the trail
met Tie Creek; or 2) bushwhack around the banks of the East Fork between Sand Creek and Tie Creek.
This was my last day in the area, and daylight was a factor. Being down here on the riverbank when
dusk fell wouldn’t be a problem, but negotiating what was (accurately) called “… a steep trail with
several switchbacks…” in the dark could cause a feller to end up on disability – or as dinner in some
grizzly’s own “home of Brown.”
Option #1 first, it would be. I sacked up, grabbed my walking stick, headed for the “Quartz Ridge
Trail” sign, walked twelve feet, and stopped. There was no more trail. Just Sand Creek, in all its full-tobrimming late-May whooshiness. No way around it, and no handy canoes to pirate. If I wanted $3
million, I’d have to ford it on foot.
20 minutes of reconnoitering left me staring at the one place I thought I might be able to cross.
Three feet was about as shallow as it got, not counting rocks the size of the mines that Nixon laid in
Haiphong Harbor. I sloshed in and quickly learned that Sand Creek wasn’t inclined to let me reach the
far bank without a fight. And while the flow might’ve looked smooth and consistent from the shore, it
walloped my legs with a “whunk… rest… whunk-whunk… rest” non-rhythm that made every one of my
James-Brownesque good-foot side-steps a complicated exercise in traction- and panic management.
Each three inches of progress required a seizure-like shimmy and a “huhn… hehh… haaaiiiii” from me.
I scored no style points, but I made it across. I eventually found where Quartz Ridge Trail
continued and I “got on up.” I huffed and I puffed up rocky, log-strewn switchbacks for a couple miles
and I reached the knackered wooden sign marking the border between the San Juan National Forest and
the Weminuche Wilderness. Lots of “…wood…” to be “… brave…” in there, but no treasure.
I continued on out of the thick pines to find several mooshy-grass meadows that sucked at my
shoes like all my exes attacked Margarita straws. Farther down the meadows I could even see where
the moosh-water collected itself into mucky little pools and streams. I was shmushing through the
actual headwaters of what would become part of the Colorado River (and, probably, someday make its
own attempt to drown a backpacker on the way to the Gulf of California). That realization and the
gorgeous seldom-seen vistas in every direction up there were extremely cool. Extraordinary. A
vacationer would’ve stopped to take it all in.
16
But all that nature stuff wasn’t making me a nickel. So rather than burst into song like one of
the von Trapp kids, I kept the train a-rollin’. A couple more miles along I reached what I hoped was Tie
Creek – not a lot of signs out there in the actual wilderness – and I searched like hell, losing my
sunglasses someplace and finding exactly squat.
I granted myself exactly one cigarette’s worth of seated self-pity, cursed Forrest Fenn’s ancestry
roundly, and took two minutes to look for my shades. None of those undertakings produced anything
useful. Then with plans A through W now lying in smoldering heaps behind me and my last day ticking
away, I shushed my rapidly-blistering feet to stop their caterwauling and steeled myself to retrace my
own four miles’ worth of now-bedraggled Reebok prints.
Part of me wanted to just stay where I was, maybe build a lean-to or some such and never set
foot east of Wolf Creek Pass again. Another part of me didn’t want to be eaten by a mountain lion or
whatever’d made those other nasty-looking tracks in the muck; it was eager to get back to where I’d
parked the Chevy. A third part just wanted to go get a beer. But a fourth part reminded me that I still
had plan X to try, assuming I didn’t get myself washed clear downstream to Hoover Dam trying to cross
Sand Creek again.
3000 feet in elevation was a lot easier to manage going down than it’d been on the way up.
Sand Creek was tougher, what with a few more hours’ worth of high-velocity snowmelt jammed
between its banks. Soggy and about two minutes this side of cardiac arrest, I made it back to the Sand
Creek Trailhead and struck off up the fire road on foot.
This was getting to be a Friday evening, and the few flat places along the East Fork between
Sand Creek the mouth of Tie Creek were already populating with campers and tents and twerp 14-yearolds buzzing about on $6500 quad-runners. Everybody I saw had words on their t-shirts and fanny-packs
strapped to their labonzas. Their expansive butts were firmly slung in XXL folding chairs. Clouds of kids
were fully engaged in games of “throw a pop can at each other and squeal” or whatever they were
playing. Civilization had left work early and come to the East Fork for the weekend, and I wasn’t much
impressed.
I pondered my annoyance as I explored my way up the riverbank in the impending dusk. What
the heck was my problem? I didn’t own the national forest. And there was nothing wrong with a little
camping, right? The truth was, these folks had time off from jobs I was over-overqualified for (and, thus,
couldn’t get), campers and ATVs I couldn’t buy, kids I didn’t have, and beers I sorely wanted just then.
They weren’t annoying; I was jealous. Come to that, I wasn’t even really jealous.
The truth was, I was fearful, in a dark place that even the pine-punji death spikes and the fresh
bear tracks and the 200-foot cliffs and the berzerk-o Beetle hadn’t been able to reach over the past few
days. It’d been two months or more since I’d heard so much as a polite “bugger off” about any of my
dozens of job applications. I’d picked up some short-duration cases here & there, but they didn’t pay
much (or even much of what I’d billed). The prospect of going back to Michigan empty-handed to face
another God-knows-how-much-more of that was scaring the bejeezus out of me. All I really had left was
Plan X, and it hadn’t been good enough to make the top 23.
I searched even harder as the sun dropped faster. I found a concrete piling on the riverbank
connected to another one across the East Fork by a thick steel cable. I guessed it was a way to get
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rescue teams or firefighters from one side to the other in a pinch. Absent a boat or a helicopter I didn’t
see any other way to do that -- crossing the East Fork on foot would’ve been a suicide mission, and a few
choice clear-to-the-waterline rock faces effectively cut off walk-in access from the Sand Creek area.
I looked a few dozen yards upriver from the pilings, and I saw what must’ve been the mouth of
Tie Creek on the other bank – the far end of Plan X. I scoured every inch of the bank to that spot, finding
nothing. But then I looked across the East Fork at the creek again, and my heart sank into my still-wet
jeans. Not far downstream on that far side were two very conspicuous fallen white birch logs; directly
between them, down near the river, was a big stump with a hollow underneath that would’ve been
exactly large enough to house a 10”x10x”5” bronze chest.
I already knew the answer, but I started looking up and down the river for a place to attempt a
crossing. Bupkis. I went back to the steel cable and put my brain into full MacGyver mode, trying to
figure out how I could zip-line or Karl Wallenda my way over there. My walking stick obviously wasn’t
going to make much of a balance pole, and a fall from the cable to the boulder-choked river alone
would’ve been a solid 15 feet (with the last six inches being at least very, very painful). Dent-a-Prize
didn’t rent boats. I didn’t have Evel Knievel’s Sky Cycle X-2 handy, and from the fire road to the
riverbank there wouldn’t have been a straight enough run to get the Chevy up to river-skipping speed –
even assuming the campers would think enough of such a stunt to fetch a rescue crew to bring me back.
I knew I couldn’t afford to extend my steerage-car travel tickets and rent on the Beetle another
day to try to find a land route Fenn could’ve walked to that spot. Evening was coming quickly up there
in the mountains, too. I was done. Nevertheless, I stood on the piling for a good long while, listening to
the abiding roar of the river and having a serious talk with myself about what was, and was not, going to
happen next.
*
I don’t remember many details about my hike back to the mud-caked Chevy, or the drive back to
its parking spot in the Escher-maze hotel lot in Pagosa Springs, or even whether the Beetle pulled any
snotty tricks as I wheeled it up onto U.S. 160 one last time. I’d been utterly lost in thought from the
time I stepped back off that concrete piling until the Beetle and I reached the turnout for Treasure Falls
just west of some evil switchbacks below Wolf Creek Pass.
I swear the darned car turned itself in there and parked. I didn’t fight back, so there I was. At
that altitude above the valley to the west there were a few rays of sunset left. I had the place to myself.
I knew the treasure wasn’t there – that’d have been way, way too obvious, and it was so near the road
that probably hundreds of searchers had been through it already.
But just like the times I’d hit “send” on applications for entry-level positions in locales like Saudi
Arabia and Macau, I got out and searched Treasure Falls anyway. Plan Y. Not because I believed I’d be
successful, but because I had some cloying need to feel like I was at least trying whatever I could. I
ransacked the place, hopping fences and climbing over and under everything physically accessible, “area
closed” signs be damned.
Stupidly, even though it was too dark even to see much by that time, I went and did the same
thing at another scenic turnout about a quarter-mile farther up 160. It was one of the few places the
locals named properly: Dead Man’s Curve. I parked near the chain-link safety fence, and beyond it I
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found some little caves and cubby-holes in the mountain. I poked around in those without a thought
about what might’ve bedded down in there for the night, knowing I wouldn’t find $3 million and proving
myself right.
Then I spied one more indentation in the stone, way out next to a can’t-see-to-the-bottom dropoff. I pondered chancing a look-see. The night was absolutely still. There was no traffic, and nobody
around. It was eerily quiet; I could hear every grain of the loose dirt shifting under my shoes. I hadn’t
remembered leaving the car idling, but I guess I must have. Because just as I was summoning courage to
climb out near the precipice for one last-ditch dangerous-as-hell Plan-Z search, I heard the Beetle’s
electric engine fan kick on.
That brief distraction was enough to wise me up. Nope. That was it. No mas. The Beetle and I
were going to travel the straightest & flattest route back to Denver via I-25, with no more than one
“zhaa-wheeeEEEEE!” per hour allowed. The biggest risk I’d be taking on my trip back to Michigan would
be walking to find a 4:00 a.m. bar in Chicago after my deep-discount flight landed late the following
night. I’d done what I could. I’d taken the best shot at becoming a one-percenter that my
circumstances would allow. And like the overqualified people working behind all those counters, or still
living near the abandoned steel mills in Gary Indiana or the shuttered auto plants in Michigan, I was just
going to have to find some way to live with that.
*
About 24 city-wandering hours after I said a fond “auf wiedersehen” to my little four-wheeled
friend at DIA, I’d just boarded an eastbound Amtrak in Chicago when I got a voice mail. It was Dent-aPrize. They couldn’t seem to find the Chevy in Durango, and they wondered how long I planned on
keeping it. Oy, vey.
My first instinct was to write to the company’s CEO and ask for a job. Maybe I couldn’t find a
box of treasure in the wilderness, but I do have two degrees; heck I could locate the cars under their
noses and print out documents two feet from their desks all day long. No problem.
But some of Forrest’s golden-goose chase had stuck with me, as I suppose it always will. So as
the train rattled me back through the rotted-out notches in the former Rust Belt, I decided to write the
company a poem with clues in it instead; I wish them better luck finding their 4x4 than I had near the
mountaintops.
Dent-a-Prize, your Chevy’s where
Portly global tourists share
Spring-fed pools of waters hot
And M.C. Escher’s parking lot.
Search the very space, to some
Known well, as “where Lance got it from.”
There your four-by-four abides.
You’ll recognize its mud-caked sides.
I’ve left it, beat by Forrest Fenn
Who’s possibly a-fibbing been.
I sought the riches promised he
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And found but empty poetry.
O, Dent-a-Prize, your boss doth clear
Cash enough to buy Zaire.
Ponder, thus, to staff a bit
Your service having gone to (“… the home of Brown…”)
Happy hunting.
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