Sep 20, 2021
The Construction of the Book — Fall 2021 — Bear’s Guide to The Chase
Getting Started With The Thrill of the Chase
My name is Adam, my friends call me Bear; you can call me whatever you like, it doesn’t make much difference to me.
This is my attempt to explain how Forrest Fenn’s The Thrill of the Chase could work.
It starts the moment you hear about it because of the internet and phones and flat little electronic books that hold more information than the largest libraries on the planet.
That’s where most of us first learned about Forrest Fenn and where some of us were determined to gather all of our information. That is why it took ten years for the mystery to be solved.
The internet was meant to augment reality, but for many, it’s replaced it. And the damn thing is still growing and intruding more and more into the real world.
I learned a great many things about how people view Forrest Fenn on the internet. Some believed him to be super human, attributing his intelligence to advanced training through the CIA and other agencies that permeate Hollywood through acronyms. Others believe him a liar, a tomb raider, a self-serving millionaire who only wants to be remembered after he’s gone and he doesn’t care how. Still others believe this treasure hunt is a form of penance, and inside his fabled treasure chest Indulgence is his confession and a list of alias’s that range from D.B. Cooper to the Zodiac Killer.
Through all that nonsense I came to the conclusion which should have been obvious from the onset; none of that matters. What matters most is who Forrest Fenn portrayed himself to be. What he thought of himself.
The Thrill of the Chase is a memoir. It says so right there in the title. It’s a recollection of a life. The tracing of a man through time. The book’s purpose is stated clearly on the dedication page: “This book is dedicated to those who love the thrill of the chase.” Which means he wrote the book for me.
This book exists for one reason and one reason only. To get me from my house in Kansas to a one foot square spot in the Rocky Mountains, indirectly of course, all so I can have a little bit of adventure in my life. In short the book is a tool and should be treated as such.
The man who wrote it said he tried to think of everything when he designed it, so everything is what we should consider when looking for clues and hints.
When the book arrived it came wrapped in plastic, not to preserve the book, but to preserve something. And that something was most obvious when I unwrapped it. It was the smell. Strong and industrial.
That smell made me think of the printing process. Long sheets of paper. Plastic top coating. String for binding the pages to the cardboard cover.
So I took it apart. I kept the string, as I knew it would be useful for plotting courses when using my protractor out in the field and I considered which chapters I should bring with me when I went out into the world.
The book itself was large and heavy, too clumsy for hiking around with, not very convenient. Surely not every page was needed at all times.
At the end of the book, in the colophon, are two symbols. Or one symbol twice, if you prefer. The double omegas. Signifying “The end is at the beginning,” or “The end is only the beginning.” In the chapter, “Important Literature,” Fenn double down on that idea when discussing The Catcher in the Rye; “…just get right down into the fling of it.”
That’s when I considered the dust jacket for the first time. The beginning of the book. A great hiding spot right there out in the open, in plain sight.
There are four pictures representing four chapters: Looking for Lewis and Clark, Flywater, My War for Me, and Gold and More.
So those are the chapters I took out. Naturally, due to the printing process, a few pages from other chapters were collected along with these, but as it turns out, those were useful too. Maybe the guy really did think of everything.
The dust jacket itself is oversized and requires two extra folds that most other hard cover books don’t bother with, probably to save money.
But this extra material allowed me to use the dust jacket as a floppy surrogate book cover, complete with pockets for miscellaneous navigation equipment like a ruler, protractor, and of course the string.
As I folded up my map, and wondered where to pack it, I realized the dust jacket’s dimensions were far more convenient than I had initially realized. Two even folds of that giant rectangle and the map became the same size as the unfolded dust jacket.
So I married the two and sandwiched the pages of those four stories between them. A couple folds, and a few binder clips, later I had a nice little field expedient treasure hunting pamphlet that was impervious to whatever the Rocky Mountain weather could throw at me.
It is in this configuration, now with two books, that I’ll proceed with my explanation. One book still safe in the cardboard hard cover it came in, minus the four stories from the dust jacket, and another created by inferences made through observation and a little imagination.
I won’t bother with the page numbers or other frivolous details. If you have a copy of the
book you can figure it all out on your own very simply. If you don’t, you can watch me explain it on YouTube on either Bear Looks for Stuff, where I keep the objective research, or The Rainbow Solve, where I dive into the subjective.
I’m sure you could guess which one I think you should do.
Ain’t the future fun?
Bear
Here’s the link to the live show
Here’s the Link to the summary video on Bear Looks for Stuff
Here’s the link to the corresponding video on The Rainbow Solve
