u/StellaMarie-85

So getting back to our exploration of the "more than 66,000 links north of Santa Fe" comment, the third version of Forrest's comments relating to the geographic location of the chest, and, by far, IMO, the most interesting.

The original comment was:

>"Since Richard mentioned the olden days lets harken to 1620 when universal land measures first became law in England and America. As you rode your horse into town you had to pass 80 telephone poles in order to reach a mile because they were 1 chain apart, or 66 feet. And each chain had 100 links, if you wanted to break it down further. Road rights-of-way also were 1 chain wide. And 80 square chains made a square mile, or 640 acres – and that was 1 section of land.

>But if you’d rather count fence posts you had to pass 320 in order to reach a mile because they were a rod apart, or 16.5 feet. And since everyone knew that an acre was 10 square chains (43,560 square feet) it was easy to tell how many acres were in your neighbor’s farm.

>Some aspects of those measures are still in use today in the horse racing business because a furlong is 10 chains in length, or 660 feet. You should feel smarter now because that’s so easy.

>If you want to apply those important figures into the thrill of the chase I will give you an additional clue. The Treasure chest full of gold and precious jewels is more than 66,000 links north of Santa Fe."

In parts I and II, I've shown that:

- At 217 words, this comment stands out as exceptionally long and complex compared to all other comments Forrest made about the chest's basic location.

- The comment seems to be making use of a fairly classic distraction technique, whereby a speaker introduces a lot of "fluff" for a listener to caught up in analyzing in order to prevent them from focusing in on something the speaker doesn't want them thinking about.

- It seems to contain an unprecedented number of hints regarding what I believe is the poem's most likely route through Santa Fe (7 clues + the blaze) - almost the entire route (!) - making it the single most helpful comment I believe Forrest ever gave, save for...

- Simultaneously containing the first known (and, importantly, for the four years that followed, only known) use of language setting the chest a specific distance north of Santa Fe. Since we can deduce from Forrest's actions, with a fairly high degree of confidence, that the chest had to be "in Santa Fe" while also somehow being "66,000 links north of Santa Fe", this gives this comment a weird "push-and-pull" quality, where it appears as though he's simultaneously trying to help and hurt someone's chances of finding the chest - the key, I think, to understanding why this one comment was so different from all the rest and what might have prompted it in the first place.

This also means that any wordplay present here is of a different sort than the Sierra del Norte reference ("hidden in the mountains north of Santa Fe") that appears to be at the heart of the most commonly used version of the "north of Santa Fe" comment (version 1), and which was, by comparison, much easier to explain (mountains north of Santa Fe = the Sierra del Norte of Santa Fe).

So that leaves us with two major problems to be resolved:

1. How could a location be both "in Santa Fe" and "more than 66,000 links north of Santa Fe" at the same time?
2. Why the push-and-pull?

Let's start by tackling the question #1...

First, it is important to understand that the deduction about the existance of wordplay in the puzzle stands independent of any conclusions regarding the poem's specific route, save for the fact that the chest must have somehow been "in Santa Fe" while also being "hidden in the mountains north of Santa Fe" (version 1), "more than 66,000 links north of Santa Fe" (version 3) and "at least 8.25 miles north of Santa Fe" (version 4).

Now, sometimes when you know someone is engaging in wordplay, there's value in trying to figure out the nature of the wordplay, because it can act as a shortcut to solving their riddle.

Othertimes, it makes more sense to simply ignore it completely and to depend on other hints to get you where you're going. This was my approach during the Chase - the general implication of the wordplay was obvious (the chest had to somehow be "in Santa Fe"), and Forrest had made so many other comments over the years that it seemed easier to explore them and trust the route than to try to figure out the specifics of his particular wordplay mechanism.

Now - there are a several different ways a person could do this, and I'll be honest - I'm not at all confident which one Forrest was using: only that, when it came to saying the chest was north of Santa Fe, he had to be using something.

So it may be none of these - and I'll rule a few out myself - but here, at least, are some possibilities.

Possibility 1) "Santa Fe, Wyoming": The first possibility we must consider, of course, is that there is some "Santa Fe" in Wyoming (easily at least 8.25 miles north of Santa Fe, New Mexico!), because that is where Forrest said the chest was in court. That would be by far the easiest way to resolve this apparent paradox, where Forrest's actions indicate the chest had to be in Santa Fe, New Mexico, but his words state Wyoming.

In this scenario, there could have been a town named Santa Fe in Wyoming, or perhaps it could have been hidden in the wreck of a Hyundai Santa Fe, at a "Church of Santa Fe", that sort of thing.

However, had the chest been in some sort of Santa Fe-named location in Wyoming, he still would have been safe - and strongly motivated - to say "it is not in Santa Fe, New Mexico" or even "it is not in the city of Santa Fe, New Mexico."

Therefore, we can rule this possibility out.

Consistent with this, in Forrest Gets Mail #2 (October, 2012), Franklin asked:

>"Forrest, I haven’t seen where anyone has asked you if you mean Santa Fe, New Mexico or another Santa Fe. I think we all assume Santa Fe, NM but there is a Santa Fe, TX as well as in other states. Have you specifically said New Mexico? Maybe we should expand our search area to in the mountains somewhere north of Santa Fe, Argentina. Once again, if I ask too much please forgive me and disregard this e-mail. I have really enjoyed this puzzle, thank you."

Forrest responded:

>"I didn’t think of that Franklin. But yes, it’s Santa Fe, New Mexico. f"

To be fair, Franklin doesn't explicitly reference the 66,000 links version comment, but only "the mountains somewhere north of Santa Fe" (version 1), but if it applies to the one, I think it likely applies to the other versions as well (esp. as version 3 was written earlier the same year this exchange with Franklin occurs, and version 4 more specifically references the city limits).

.... Also a quick shout-out for what I believe to be Forrest's delightfully direct choice of wording here in saying "it's" Santa Fe, New Mexico. :)

Possibility 2) Measured From Which Limit?: Another possibility would be that the 66,000 links/8.25 miles was being measured from the southernmost city limit - synonymous with Santa Fe County's northern limit (so, "north of Santa Fe (County)") - which could theoretically leave parts of the city in play. I tested this out, and 8.25 miles from the southernmost limit near Valle Vista would rule out most, but not all, of the city.

Locations 8.25 miles north of key points on the city boundaries. Interestingly, I just realized that 8.25 miles from the very southernmost point by Valle Vista seems to land you back up by what I believe is the poem's starting point at Hyde and Sierra del Norte, right by the city limits at the northeast end of town. I'm doubtful that was the wordplay at work, but if so, it could imply that in this case Forrest is using \"Treasure chest\" symbolically to refer to the city as a whole.

So, while it doesn't work for my own solve that ends next to the airport, it might be a possibility for other Santa Fe searchers.

A closely related possibility would be that the 8.25 miles north of Santa Fe isn't 8.25 miles north of the City of Santa Fe, but rather, the surrounding Santa Fe County via some other break in the County border. We know Forrest knew about Santa Fe County because he wrote a story about "The Iron Rooster of Santa Fe County" in Once Upon a While. Perhaps the County's shape contains some cutouts one could be north of.

Looking at the map, Santa Fe County is shaped basically like a big rectangle with the City of Santa Fe in the middle. There is one notable cutout - the triangle on the west side by White Rock - but it is already north of the city and therefore not in play.

The borders of Santa Fe County

However, the City of Santa Fe is considered a part of the County (not an entirely separate municipality which creates a hole in the county map, as is possible in some places here in Canada), and so someone standing in the City of Santa Fe is simultaneously standing in the County of Santa Fe as well.

So unless my understanding - or Forrest's understanding - of planning districts in New Mexico is off (admittedly, a possibility), I think we can probably rule this one out too.

Possibility 3) By Name: Another easy solution would be for the "Santa Fe" being referenced in this 66,000 links comment to not be the city or county, but the airport or river by that same name. Las Orillas is immediately north of the river, and about a third or so of the city looks to be north of the river as well. Airports are often referred to just by their name (e.g. "O'Hare", "Pearson", "Heathrow", etc.), but I would normally find "Santa Fe" meaning the Santa Fe airport to be a bit of a stretch due to specificity. However, since Forrest was a fighter pilot and presumably kept his airplane at Santa Fe, I would say it's fair game. Most of the City of Santa Fe is north of the Santa Fe Airport, though notably in my case, not Las Orillas due to a funny unsevered slice of land north of Paseo Real that is actually part of the airport land, but that's a whoooooooooole other can of worms I'm going to leave for now, as the implications would be quite messy.

So - another possibility for someone looking to engage in wordplay, but not my favourite.

Possibility 4) By Distance From Starting Point: If you read the 66,000 links comment, it's all about measuring distance by counting what you'll ride by on your trip. So Forrest is, I think, actually telling us how to use the information he is giving.

In real life, when people give distances, the travel distance and final location are actually treated as discrete pieces of information, even though they often seem otherwise in English text due to the way they appear side-by-side.

For instance, let's say we're standing at the Plaza in Santa Fe, and trying to get to Ski Santa Fe.

The Santa Fe Plaza at the centre of town (left) and Ski Santa Fe to the northeast (right)

(Photo credits: Santa Fe Plaza in Autumn by Jim & Robin Kunze; Ski Santa Fe by Scopulorum)

If you were to ask me how far Ski Santa Fe is, I might say "it's 17 km to the northeast of town".

The \"as the crow flies\" distance between the Plaza and Ski Santa Fe

Importantly, I do not subtract the distance between my "starting point" in the middle of town to the city limits in that distance.

If we apply this same pattern to his comment:

>"As you rode your horse into town (...) The Treasure chest full of gold and precious jewels is more than 66,000 links north of Santa Fe"

Forrest has given us:

1. A starting point (the point where you "ride into town" - i.e., the city limits)
2. The distance you'll travel (at least 8.25 miles / 66,000 links); and
3. Where you end up geographically (north of Santa Fe).

So there would be many locations just north of the city limit, but still southwest of what I believe to be the starting point at Hyde and Sierra del Norte and at least 8.25 miles from that point, for which that could be valid. (Basically, everything in the northwest quadrant of a map of the area).

As another example, here's Ski Santa Fe to the Office of Archaeological Studies. If one were trying to get there from Ski Santa Fe, one could say it is 28 km away "to the north of town" - even though one would be travelling southwest to get there.

Travelling southwest but landing \"north of\" (city limits shown in red)

It probably makes you twitch a bit, but it is still technically - from a linguistic perspective - correct.

Given the structure of this carefully composed comment - again, by far the most complex Forrest ever made - this is where I'd be putting my money in terms of the wordplay with this one.

Possibility 5) Wordplay Using the Word "North": It seemed to me that many of Forrest's comments included amused wordplay, which was often based in the origins of the words used. So, I thought I should look up the history of the word "north", and it turns out that the etymological root for "north" is "left".

Forrest spoke many times about standing at the "right" spot - like many others, I'd always assumed by that he meant the spot the chest was hidden. But it occurred to me after looking up the origins of the word "north" that, if I'm correct that the Forrest's map is designed to be "pole-to-pole", then the "right" spot in Santa Fe would be the "north pole" at Hyde and Sierra del Norte (located on the east side of the map), which arguably would make South Polo at Paseo Real the "left" spot.

Putting two \"spots\" on the map - the symbolic \"North Pole\" starting point at Hyde and Sierra del Norte and the \"South Pole\" end point at South Polo and Real

When applied to Santa Fe, the poem's \"North Pole\" stands at the right side of the city map, while the \"South Pole\" stands at the left.

And actually, when I went back to get an exact quote, it was this one from Business Insider (2017):

>"The treasure is out there waiting for the person who can make all the lines cross in the right spot.”

So technically, he didn't say that the treasure is waiting where all the lines cross; he said that it was waiting for someone who was able to make all the lines cross the "right spot". So that could be the starting point, rather than the end point.

I don't think this north = left is an especially likely explanation for the wordplay at hand (I don't think it's really "fair game" myself to treat a word's root as synonymous with its definition myself), but it is one other way it could be done.

Anyways! That's all I could come up with. I'll address the question of why I think Forrest might have constructed such an odd "push-and-pull" comment shortly, but if others have ideas for how something could be both "in Santa Fe" and "66,000 links north of Santa Fe" via wordplay, I'd be very interested to hear them.

So far, in the first part of my analysis of Forrest's comment about the chest being "more than 66,000 links north of Santa Fe", I showed how this particular comment was very unusual in terms of both its length and complexity, as well as in how it also appears to have been purposefully designed - for reasons unknown - to distract, an idea I will come back to later.

But for now, we'll park that in favour of looking at question #2...

COULD THE COMMENT ITSELF CONTAIN ANY HINTS?

The 66,000 links comment was very detailed compared to most Forrest gave about the chest's location. With the would-be gravedigger, Forrest shortened his comment - omitted "in the mountains" - presumably to hurt that searcher's chances: an instant comeuppance, as it were. Here however, he's added a lot of words... so maybe he's trying to give some extra hints, and actually help someone somehow??

I've explained in an earlier post a few reasons why I am convinced the chest must have been somehow in Santa Fe, despite the strong evidence in support of Wyoming.

Assuming Forrest was 1) honest and 2) made no errors in his understanding of the area's geography (something I am actually not 100% certain of right now), then it must somehow be possible for the chest to be "in Santa Fe", while also being "hidden in the mountains north of Santa Fe", "66,000 links north of Santa Fe", and "at least 8.25 miles north of Santa Fe" - a conclusion this series of posts is meant to explore and, hopefully, resolve. I've also documented the particular "pole to pole" route I believe the poem follows through the city, starting at the parking lot at Hyde at Sierra del Norte (so it would be literally "hidden in the mountains north of Santa Fe") and ending at former apple orchard on the southwest end of town called Las Orillas (265 Paseo Real, off of South Polo Road).

From Pole to Pole and \"Hidden in the Mountains North of Santa Fe\"

\"The Nature of My Game\": Proposed Nine Step Route Through Santa Fe

(Full version here)

End Game: The Old Apple Orchard, Las Orillas

I've also observed what I believe to be a pattern in Forrest's comments: that he seemed to take it as a personal challenge, at least in some cases, to squeeze as many hints in as few words as possible - basically aiming for something that is "all wheat, no chaff", same as with the poem. When things are moving too slowly for your taste, you start to come up with games for yourself: this seems to have been Forrest's.

So, that's the lens I've used when looking for hints in this 66,000 links comment, which again, is:

>Since Richard mentioned the olden days lets harken to 1620 when universal land measures first became law in England and America. As you rode your horse into town you had to pass 80 telephone poles in order to reach a mile because they were 1 chain apart, or 66 feet. And each chain had 100 links, if you wanted to break it down further. Road rights-of-way also were 1 chain wide. And 80 square chains made a square mile, or 640 acres – and that was 1 section of land.

>But if you’d rather count fence posts you had to pass 320 in order to reach a mile because they were a rod apart, or 16.5 feet. And since everyone knew that an acre was 10 square chains (43,560 square feet) it was easy to tell how many acres were in your neighbor’s farm.

>Some aspects of those measures are still in use today in the horse racing business because a furlong is 10 chains in length, or 660 feet. You should feel smarter now because that’s so easy.

>If you want to apply those important figures into the thrill of the chase I will give you an additional clue. The Treasure chest full of gold and precious jewels is more than 66,000 links north of Santa Fe.

I also want to be clear before I get going that I didn't bother with this particular analysis of the 66,000 links comment until well after I finished my proposed solve ("The Nature of My Game"). This is not a case of me coming up with a route through Santa Fe based on this comment. My proposed route followed from:

1. My deduction that based on Forrest's actions, the chest not only could, but somehow had to be in Santa Fe;
2. A realization thanks to the help of a friend that "the mountains north of Santa Fe" could be a reference to Santa Fe's Sierra del Norte (literally: the mountains of the north) which meant Forrest could have been referring to a location within the city;
3. That the stop sign at Ten Thousand Waves Way and Hyde Park Road in the northeast end of town was most likely "where warm waters halt"; and
4. A helpful comment made separately by two of my friends on two different occasions which prompted me to consider a southwest-bound, rather than northeast-bound, route through town.

Letting going of the belief that the route had to be northbound resulted in a sudden and dramatic change in how easily things started clicking into place, which, I have to say, was a lot of fun to experience on the ground. All eight remaining path segments - one clue per segment - just flow from there. (And if it is of interest to anyone, I've shared my explanations for each of the nine clues here).

I feel fairly confident about my solve up to the end of clue 9 (South Polo Road), and that, given the limited options available along that road, the property the chest was on must have been Las Orillas (especially after coming across Forrest's comment about the treasure being a chest of tomatoes!) But, I am less confident about how one was supposed to get to the hiding spot from South Polo, though I have a few ideas. So for now, we'll just focus on how this 66,000 links comment appears to relate to what I believe are the 9 clues through Santa Fe...

First, the numbers-heavy "voice" in which the comment is written matches the one used in "My War For Me", which Forrest said was the most important in The Thrill of the Chase. As I've noted in another post, that chapter appears to have been written in the voice of author Jules Verne - a man most famous for his books Around the World in 80 Days (à propos for a pole-to-pole puzzle!) and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (in which the learned fisherman-pirate Captain Nemo travels to the South Pole in order to declare himself its emperor).

And then in terms of specific wording and clues...

1. Within the context of Santa Fe, "66,000 links" actually appears to hint at several clues all at once. These include 10,000 Waves Way (the "warm waters" referenced in "where warm waters halt", part of clue #1, and a number Forrest mentioned quite often), County Road 66 (Agua Fria, clue #7), and the golf links at the Santa Fe Country Club, which stands at the intersection of Paseo del Sol W. (the blaze) and Airport Road (clue #8). The "66" could also be taken to be a reference to Route 66, AKA "The Mother Road", which in turn could be a reference to Acequia Madre (clue #4). That's already five clues (!) hinted at in this one comment in a mere two (!!) well-chosen words. If this was intentional, then it was a masterpiece of wordsmithing on Forrest's part.
2. Forrest signed this particular comment not as "Forrest Fenn", but as "Forrwst Fenn". I believe the letter "W" in Paseo del Sol W. is the "real" blaze, and so this twist aligns with that as well.
3. He opens his comment by talking about someone riding their horse into town in the early 1600s; Paseo de Peralta (clue #5), is named after the founder of Santa Fe, who rode into town around this time. I suspect Forrest may have explicitly mentioned the year 1620 - after Peralta's arrival - because it coincides with the arrival of the Pilgrims, perhaps hinting at the idea of foreigners arriving at a site with the purpose of establishing a colony. A 1620 date also makes more sense for some of the discussion around English land surveying units that followed.
4. He mentions that "some aspects of those measures are still in use today in the horse racing business". At the end of South Polo Road (clue #9, in my proposed solve) sits HIPICO, Santa Fe's equestrian centre, formerly the Santa Fe Horse Park. South Polo also sits right at the edge of town (presumably how Las Orillas got its name), so where he talked about "riding their horse into town", that comment could also be in reference to the idea of horses at the town/city limits.
5. The first unit Forrest mentions in his comment are telephone poles - a very odd inclusion for a comment set in 1620! I believe that, based on the route the poem seems to chart through Santa Fe, there is a pattern in the poem of "things which contain their own opposites", which is alluded to in the line in the opening stanza talking about the "hint of riches new and old". The poem contains many match-pairs of words (warm/cold, begin/end, up/down, etc.). Only a few words are missing an obvious pair word, including "answers" in the stanza which goes "So why is it I must go / and leave my trove for all to seek? / The answers I already know, / I've done it tired and now I'm weak." I believe the missing pair word isn't the more obvious "question", but rather "call", as in "call-and-answer", such as is used in call-and-answer games like Marco Polo (South Polo Road, clue #9, again).
6. And last but not least, by far my personal favourite... The post Forrest decided to make this comment on was titled "Forrest Fenn - Land Surveyor". The name "Hyde" - as in Hyde Park Road (clue #1, the only place where 10,000 Waves Way stops) - comes from an old English land surveying unit, equivalent to about 120 acres.

Nice.

That brings us up to seven (!) of the clues plus the blaze being referenced in a single comment - practically hinting at the entire route through Santa Fe, albeit in no particular order.

Taken all together, that would make this the single most complex hint I've noticed Forrest giving anywhere, if the poem is indeed a map of Santa Fe. Not only that, but it spans the first clue (the one Forrest suggested was most critical) right through to the last. So not only would it have been the most challenging to design, but it is also wildly generous.

... But - ONLY if the reader thinks to try following the poem down through the city from Hyde, rather than heading north - something which the message of this comment seems engineered to prevent.

And that's where things get really interesting, because, what that last sentence of the comment was doing - for the very first time in the Chase, a whole two years after the whole thing started - was to use distance-based language that could be read as excluding Santa Fe from the viable search area.

So now we've got this weird, conflicting push-and-pull setup, with Forrest cramming almost every clue into a single comment while also designing it to put people off his trail... all of which was then combined with what appears to be an attempt at distraction!

I cannot stress enough how weird this single comment was among all the hundreds Forrest made.

Who creates something like that?

What was he trying to achieve?

And was the comment made to make the Chase easier... or harder?

I was just listening to an old interview by Margie Goldsmith on the Old Santa Fe Trading Co. webpage, and I just have to say, even after all these years, I still love the sound and cadence of the poem being read outloud.

But in any case, now we can start to really get to it, with the third major version of Forrest's comments regarding the basic location of the chest, where he described it as being "66,000 links north of Santa Fe".

One of the things I've found challenging about trying to share my proposed solution to this puzzle is that when we, as humans, are working through problems, our brains often handle information across a web of connections all at once. But, in order to communicate our ideas to others, we have to find some way to put them into some kind of sequence - a challenging prospect for those of us who tend to be more lateral thinkers.

I imagine, as such, that much of what I've written over the last year may seem scattershot, but most of it has been written to establish a foundation from which to explore this one particular comment.

Over those previous posts, I've shown:

- How Forrest's comment about the chest's geographic location as being somewhere "north of Santa Fe" evolved over time to give rise to four distinct versions of the comment.

- How Forrest's first major version of this comment, which described the chest as being "hidden in the mountains north of Santa Fe" could mean somewhere within the city and county's Sierra del Norte - literally the "mountains of the north" - rather than without it, thereby reducing the search area by over 99.9%, transforming a "needle in the haystack" problem to something much more doable. Furthermore, if I'm right, then this bit of wordplay would be an example of a tendency I've noticed in Forrest's writing, which is the use of wording that can "cut both ways".

- How the second version of the comment, made to a man asking to dig up his parents' grave, may have been written to hurt their chances of solving the puzzle by omitting the word "mountains" and therefore any possible reference to the Sierra del Norte.

- How despite an apparent willingness to talk about places where the chest was not when it affected searcher safety, Forrest never said the chest was not in Santa Fe, even though doing so would have likely helped protect him and his family from searchers who were obviously convinced otherwise. This wasn't the first time something was obviously missing from Forrest's comments, either - as I showed in an earlier post, he also never spoke about the chest as being "in wilderness", despite searchers', journalists', and even realtors' tendency to do so. Taken together, these two rather striking omissions would seem to point to an urban or rural solution to the puzzle, in or around Santa Fe.

- How Forrest's use of Holden Caulfield's voice in "Important Literature" (an idea first put forth by Smell the Sunshine here) could be an indication that the treasure hunt may have been designed primarily for the benefit not of us adults, but of children, in keeping with Holden's dream of becoming "the catcher in the rye".

- How it appears that Forrest not infrequently went out of his way to pack as many hints as possible into a small bit of text or imagery - likely, I think, as a personal challenge and way to keep himself entertained over what probably felt like the world's longest riddle game. I've provided a few such examples already, such as the map as well as the cover of Too Far to Walk, and his comment about his church being "in the mountains".

- Finally, I've also shared the specific route I think the poem charts through Santa Fe, and touched very briefly on the property I believe it leads you to - a former apple orchard right at the city limits and now owned by Santa Fe County, called Las Orillas (literally, "The Edge").

All of which brings us to version #3 of the famous "8.25 mile" comment - the one that talks about the chest being at least "66,000 links north of Santa Fe".

Before I get going, I'd also like to apologize in advance for any offense (if I'm wrong) or hurt (if I'm right) this series of posts might cause. There were only three times I thought I saw Forrest do something that seemed purposefully designed to stymie a searcher, and this, unfortunately, was one of them. But whereas the other two seemed to have been rooted in offense, his motivation here appears to me to have been very different, and not at all born out of ill-intent.

But I digress.

Let's go back...

In April 2012, Forrest posted the following comment about the chest's location to a post titled "Forrest Fenn: Land Surveyor" on ecologist Richard Saunier's Mountain Walk blog. As you'll see, it differs quite significantly from the other two versions of the "north of Santa Fe" comment I've explored so far (version 1 and version 2) - specifically, in its length and all the numbers - or, if you prefer, "figures" - thrown in:

>"Since Richard mentioned the olden days lets harken to 1620 when universal land measures first became law in England and America. As you rode your horse into town you had to pass 80 telephone poles in order to reach a mile because they were 1 chain apart, or 66 feet. And each chain had 100 links, if you wanted to break it down further. Road rights-of-way also were 1 chain wide.

>And 80 square chains made a square mile, or 640 acres – and that was 1 section of land.

>But if you’d rather count fence posts you had to pass 320 in order to reach a mile because they were a rod apart, or 16.5 feet. And since everyone knew that an acre was 10 square chains (43,560 square feet) it was easy to tell how many acres were in your neighbor’s farm.

>Some aspects of those measures are still in use today in the horse racing business because a furlong is 10 chains in length, or 660 feet. You should feel smarter now because that’s so easy.

>If you want to apply those important figures into the thrill of the chase I will give you an additional clue. The Treasure chest full of gold and precious jewels is more than 66,000 links north of Santa Fe."

This comment is so incredibly unusual compared to the three other basic variations of the "north of Santa Fe" comment that it warrants some extra attention.

Three questions immediately spring to mind:

First: Why is this comment so long? Forrest's writing style was the very embodiment of "brevity is the soul of wit". Why the rambling all of a sudden?

Second: Given its complexity and the effort it would have taken to compose, could there be any hints in the comment itself?

Third: What could have prompted the creation of such a detailed, completely different way of saying the treasure is "hidden in the mountains north of Santa Fe"?

This 66,000 links comment, made in 2012 - two years after the launch of the Chase - was the first time Forrest set a distance "north of Santa Fe". And the distance - the equivalent to 8.25 miles - is minimal. Importantly, it is not enough to rule out any location in Santa Fe being the answer for clues #1 - #8, if you were hoping to keep fanatics out of your backyard. So why bother?

As I've already noted, it stood out as strange that in the wake of the break-in in 2018 Forrest did not increase the distance the chest had to be from Santa Fe. (Especially if it was all the way up in Wyoming!!) But while that stands out as an argument against the chest having been in Wyoming, it still begs the question - if a man going through your door with an axe isn't enough to get you to rule out additional distance, what is?

So let's start by taking a look at that first question.

1) WHY THE LONG COMMENT?
This 66,000 link comment clocks in at a whopping 217 words (!) - longer than the poem itself.

Compare that to all the other comments Forrest made about the chest's location relative to Santa Fe:

The Thrill of the Chase (27 words):

>"I knew exactly where to hide the chest so it would be difficult to find but not impossible. It's in the mountains somewhere north of Santa Fe."

Jenny Kile's Armchair Treasure Hunts (11 words):

>"Hidden Somewhere in the Mountains North of Santa Fe New Mexico"

Forrest Gets Mail (18 words):

>"The treasure is hidden north of Santa Fe. Texas is south.  Please don’t dig up my parent’s graves."

Great Big Story (18 words):

>"I hid the treasure chest more than 8.25 miles north of Santa Fe, in the Rocky Mountains someplace."

Fundamental Guidelines (18 words):

>"The treasure is hidden more than 8.25 miles north of the northern limits of Santa Fe, New Mexico."

So right from the get-go, something seems off here. But this one's actually pretty straightforward, I think, as it's easily recognizable as a classic distraction technique.

The way this particular one works is you fill a conversation with "fluff" so that by the time the person is done picking through it all, they've forgotten to ask why you brought something up in the first place.

And it worked: searchers quickly focused in on the values and units Forrest provided to calculate that what he was "really" saying was that the chest was 8.25 miles north of Santa Fe. That then dominated the conversation.

Importantly, this isn't the only time we've seen Forrest use this type of distraction technique: Dal - whether he realized it or not - appears to have described another instance of Forrest doing so back in the summer of 2012 when he told Dal he'd driven within 100 yards of the chest. Forrest left it at that until Dal had sent him a massive list of all the roads he could remember having been down - essentially, providing all the requisite fluff himself.

He may have fared better if he had asked himself a different question: how was it Forrest knew where he'd been, and how long had Forrest been sitting on this fact? (Obviously, Forrest was unable to resist the tease, so my guess would be that it was somewhere Dal had been relatively recently, and, given the evidence that the chest was most likely in Santa Fe, may even have been somewhere Forrest drove Dal himself - perhaps as a secret thanks to, and a bit of a prank on, Dal, who, if Forrest past away before the chest was found, would eventually learn he'd been gotten to the site even before the finder).

You can see Dal's description of this exchange here.

Interestingly, I just realized the dates for these two events - the only two times I thought I saw Forrest use this distraction technique - are quite close. The "fluffy" 66,000 links comment was made in April 2012 and Dal said Forrest made this comment to him about distance sometime in summer, 2012.

But if this "66,000 links" comment was crafted with distraction in mind, who was Forrest was trying to distract, and why?

I'll circle back to my theory on that in a bit. But first, we'll look at the second question: might there by any hints in the comment itself?

One of the reasons I think the Chase proved so challenging is that there was so much emphasis placed on Forrest's words - the exact content of what was being said - and not enough on his decisions and actions, which I think are much more revealing. In addition to the obvious, these, to me, also include what he chose not to say and how exactly he opted to word what he was willing to say, all considered in the context in which things were said or done.

In my last post, I shared three lists of established facts: one of some of the major developments in the Chase prior to the ending; one with examples of where Forrest said the chest was not; and one with quotations describing where the place the chest was.

So with all those pieces of information already in mind, we can look into the empty spaces around what Forrest said and see what missing pieces, with a little bit of logic and imagination, might be there for us to see.

For starters, we know:

1) Forrest was comfortable explicitly saying where the chest was not, and did so in a number of ways on numerous occasions.

Examples include Forrest saying the chest was:

• Not in a graveyard
• Not in an outhouse
• Not in a cave or a mine
• Not in Utah, Idaho, or Canada
• Not underwater
• Not near the Rio Grande
• Not anywhere where it would be necessary to move large rocks or climb up or down a steep precipice
• Not under a manmade object
• Not in the desert
• Not on the top of any mountain
• Not somewhere a 79 or 80 year old man couldn't go
• Not in close proximity to a human trail
• Not in a dangerous place

2) With very few exceptions, almost every comment he made concerning where the chest actually was spoke about its location relative to Santa Fe - even though there are many other ways he could have chosen to describe the chest's basic location.

Examples of these Santa Fe-centric statements include:

• "It's in the mountains somewhere north of Santa Fe."
• "The treasure is hidden north of Santa Fe. Texas is south."
• "The Treasure chest full of gold and precious jewels is more than 66,000 links north of Santa Fe."
• "I said the treasure is hidden in the Rocky Mountains at least 8 miles north of Santa Fe."
• "I hid the treasure chest more than 8.25 miles north of Santa Fe, in the Rocky Mountains someplace."
• "The treasure is hidden more than 8.25 miles north of the northern limits of Santa Fe, New Mexico."
• "Hidden somewhere in the mountains north of Santa Fe New Mexico"

It is not hard to spot the pattern here. He could have said instead, for instance:

• The chest is hidden northwest of Taos
• The chest is hidden south of Missoula
• The chest is east of Great Salt Lake
• The chest is somewhere in the Rocky Mountain states
• The chest is within 500 miles of Yellowstone

You know - mixed it up a bit. Any of those would have served to help pull attention away from Santa Fe.

But for some reason, he stuck to the Santa Fe wording - again, and again, and again. And what you see with the structure of these comments is that the wording pivots and changes around three core concepts that never changed - "north of", "mountains", and "Santa Fe".

When it comes to riddles, wording that the riddler refuses to deviate from is often a good hint about what's important in the puzzle, and where any trickery - most often, in the form of wordplay - might lie.

And of course, the nice thing about wordplay is that when all is said and done, the riddler-maker can say they never lied at all: it is only that those attempting to solve the riddle misinterpreted their meaning.

3) Forrest was proud of how his treasure hunt had drawn visitors to Santa Fe. He spoke about its impact on tourism and hotel booking rates, and the City even declared a "Thrill of the Chase Day" on May 25, 2015. You can see the framed declaration in his closet - somewhere he could enjoy it, but it was kept away from the public - and visiting searchers' - view. Consider how this differs from the carefully curated items on display in the rest of his home.

Official proclamation for \"The Thrill of the Chase Day\"

4) He and his family had been subjected to repeated threatening behaviors. Examples include:

• Multiple individuals stalking Forrest and his family between at least 2014 and 2019
• The fellow reenacting The Shining on his door with an axe in 2018
• (At least) Seven death threats
• (At least) Two blackmail attempts
• Several threats of bodily harm

I could not find any examples that were dated prior to 2014, but that is not to say there weren't problems then as well - only that they do not seem (?) to have made the newspaper. That would seem to suggest that the later incidents were more significant than those ones earlier on. Forrest did not put dates to the incidents he documented to Dal. However, if anyone has other specific examples they can confidently put a date to, please let me know.

5) These incidents continued to occur despite Forrest having seemingly put a southern limit on the Chase with this statement on Richard Saunier's Mountain Walk blog all the way back in 2012:

>"Since Richard mentioned the olden days lets harken to 1620 when universal land measures first became law in England and America. As you rode your horse into town you had to pass 80 telephone poles in order to reach a mile because they were 1 chain apart, or 66 feet. And each chain had 100 links, if you wanted to break it down further. Road rights-of-way also were 1 chain wide. And 80 square chains made a square mile, or 640 acres – and that was 1 section of land.

>But if you’d rather count fence posts you had to pass 320 in order to reach a mile because they were a rod apart, or 16.5 feet. And since everyone knew that an acre was 10 square chains (43,560 square feet) it was easy to tell how many acres were in your neighbor’s farm.

>Some aspects of those measures are still in use today in the horse racing business because a furlong is 10 chains in length, or 660 feet. You should feel smarter now because that’s so easy.

>If you want to apply those important figures into the thrill of the chase I will give you an additional clue. The Treasure chest full of gold and precious jewels is more than 66,000 links north of Santa Fe."

Although he did not do so himself at he time, searchers quickly did the conversions using the units provided and determined that "66,000 links north of Santa Fe" was equivalent to 8.25 miles. This would appear to eliminate the whole city in one go.

6) As recounted by Dal, theses threatening incidents were sufficiently concerning that by late 2019, he was seriously considering calling off the Chase entirely.

He wrote to Dal on Dec. 7, 2019, saying:

>"I am leaning toward retrieving the chest and will probably do it some time before the next search season."

He also described to Dal the post he would make to the community to let them know he had called it.

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER:

Forrest's plan to pull the chest was the nuclear option.

But - it is logical to assume that before a person would go that route - assuming they had a vested interested in the project and wanted to see it play out the way they envisioned (both fair assumptions here, I think) - they would try lesser actions to address the problem first. Cancelling the Chase outright would have been his last resort, and we already know Forrest actively resisted calls to do so over the years, particularly from the parks and policing communities.

One example of a "smaller step" solution is the "how to find me in the event of a kidnapping" scenario he detailed to Dal. He anticipated a problem (his kidnapping), and came up with a strategy to resolve it that saved him from having to cancel the Chase.

But other non-nuclear options were possible as well - and one of the most important is very much missing from the picture I've painted above.

Now - many good riddles play on a person's assumptions, so often the key to solving them is to check yours on the way in. However, when it came to the Chase, I allowed myself one assumption that I felt was relatively safe. And that was this:

I believe Forrest Fenn loved his family.

And if that is true, then I believe it is possible to look at all the above and determine, with relative ease and logic alone, where the chest had to have been.

It goes like this:

When Forrest and his family came under attack, he would have been putting a lot of thought into what his next move should be. We know he was, because of the conversation Dal shared about pulling the chest. And if he loved his family - again, I think, a safe assumption to make - then we also know the nature of that move. He would have chosen the move which best protected his loved ones, given the circumstances.

We also know what the move was. Rather than pull the chest, Forrest went on Great Big Story in 2016 and publicly stated, for the first time, that the chest was hidden:

>"(...) more than 8.25 miles north of Santa Fe, in the Rocky Mountains someplace."

Again, if Forrest loved his family - my fundamental assumption in all this - then we know that this move had to have been the best move he believed he could make under those circumstances, shy of going full nuclear and just calling off the Chase.

And, as I'll explain below, the only way that could be "his best move" was if the chest was - somehow - in Santa Fe all along.

First:

We know from the list of seventeen examples above that Forrest was obviously comfortable saying where the chest was not, particularly when it came to issues of safety. Some of these places contain sections of the Rockies much larger than Santa Fe, but he was still comfortable eliminating them.

Forrest also knew that the people who were threatening him and his family believed it was somehow possible that the chest was in Santa Fe.

This is absolutely key, so I will state it again:

Forrest knew that the problem was that the people who were threatening him and his family believed it was somehow possible that the chest was in Santa Fe.

That meant they either:

A) Hadn't seen his 66,000 link comment from 2012, which seemingly rules the city out; or

B) Believed there was some sort of wordplay at work in that statement that therefore meant the city was still "in play".

While "A" is obviously unlikely - anyone so vested in the Chase as to be involved in criminal activity had presumably, at a minimum, read Dal's "Fundamental Guidelines" page at some point - the solution to it is nonetheless obvious: you just raise the profile of the comment to make sure everyone hears it.

And, exactly as you'd expect, Forrest went and did so by including it in his Great Big Story interview in 2016, and then by going on to make a slightly different version of it in 2017.

But B!

Oh, but B is a whole other story.

What did Forrest do about B?

Nothing.

To be fair, he tried to make it look like he had done something by changing a few words - played a verbal shell game of sorts - but he didn't change the only word that counted.

There was only one simple thing he had to do - one thing he had to say, in all those ten years of talking about his treasure hunt - to solve the problem presented by B. That's the all-important "missing piece". But it's not what he did, and therefore the question must be, "why?"

But let's back up and look at what he DID do.

What he did do to try and reduce the appearance of wordplay was to start integrating the distance conversion from 66,000 links to 8.25 miles into his comment about where the chest was.

So it went from this in 2012:

>"The Treasure chest full of gold and precious jewels is more than 66,000 links north of Santa Fe."

To this in the GBS video in 2016:

>"I hid the treasure chest more than 8.25 miles north of Santa Fe, in the Rocky Mountains someplace."

However -

And I cannot stress this enough -

That is not what you say when a man goes through your door with axe.

What you say far simpler than that.

You just say:

"The chest is not in Santa Fe."

In fact, if you're feeling threatened?

You don't just say it one way. You make it clear. You make it the most unambiguous, detailed, leave-no-loophole-unclosed statement you can possibly make.

You go on. You say:

>"The chest is not in Santa Fe. The chest is not within 200 miles of Santa Fe. The place I would like to die is not Santa Fe. People need to stop looking in Santa Fe. It is a wonderful place to call home and people should absolutely come visit it and explore it and indeed delight in it when they get the chance, but the chest is not there. My treasure is not there. The gold is not there. The jewels are not there. My olive jar is not there. And if another incident like this occurs, I will be forced to call of the Chase."

Heck, if I was putting up with what Forrest was putting up with and I had a guy reenacting The Shining on my door while the chest was hiding all the way up in Wyoming? I'd rule out the entire state of New Mexico, for cripes sake! It had a good 10 year run! Generated lots of tourism. Let Wyoming enjoy things for a bit.

But he didn't.

Because Wyoming, fishing, Yellowstone, even the beauty of the great outdoors - that was never what all this was about.

This was about his flight over Philadelphia, and the flash of inspiration - maybe even revelation - he had up there.

This was about caring for your community, about doing your best to look after the ones you love, and the idea that at the end of the day, there really is no place like home.

Forrest could have chosen, when he and his family first came under threat, to simply call off the Chase. Arguably, that is the very best move if the only thing he was thinking about was people's physical well-being. But I think Forrest was motivated by something bigger than that - the importance of living life according to your beliefs, and a refusal to be pressured out of doing something good he believed in. I also suspect the thought of setting a good example for his children and grandchildren would have been weighing on his mind - that he wouldn't want them to see him as someone who could be bullied.

In any case, it appears to me that, rather than pull the chest, Forrest decided to do what he felt he did best: he decided to outsmart his opponents instead.

And you want to see a really obvious example?

Here's a great one - Forrest's comment to the local paper after the man axed his way into his home:

>“I’ve said 100 times that the treasure is not on my property,” Fenn said, according to The Santa Fe New Mexican. “It’s north of Santa Fe.”

He did it again!!!

Absolutely incorrigible.

Would not budge from that wording and just say that it wasn't in Santa Fe, even in the face of being unwillingly cast in a real life reenactment of a Stephen King novel.

To my mind, no one should look at that statement, knowing the circumstances under which it was made, and have any doubts as to where the chest had to be.

Now - many people may disagree with me on this, and that's totally fair, because this entire sequence of arguments is predicated on an assumption on my part - that Forrest loved his family, and his actions were guided primarily by that - and my own beliefs about how people act when they believe they and their loved ones are in danger.

I could be wrong about either of those.

But - if I am right about this most basic deduction - that would still leave us with a few questions:

1. How could it be true that the chest was somehow "in Santa Fe" and also 66,000 links / 8.25 miles north of it? Logic dictates there must be some kind of wordplay at work.
2. Forrest could have easily opted to strengthen his distance-based version of the "north of Santa Fe" comment after the threats against his family grew more serious, but he did not. Since that's the case, what could possibly have happened in 2012 that was more significant to Forrest than all the subsequent stalkings and break-ins that would follow to prompt his statement (the 66,000 links one) seemingly eliminating Santa Fe from the search area in the first place? And why is that one comment so fundamentally different in its construction than all the others?
3. If the chest was in Santa Fe all along, what could have motivated Forrest's post-Chase comments, which consistently affirmed Wyoming as the hiding place - even to the courts?

Fortunately, I believe there's actually already enough information out there in the community to make an educated guess to each of those, which I'll explain in subsequent posts. And it doesn't hurt that, for the latter, Forrest seemed determined to help the search community work out what was going on, either.

Anyways - that's more than enough rambling for now. If anyone has actually made it this far, thank you for bearing with me... Antoine de Saint-Exupéry once wrote:

>“Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”

And needless to say, I'm still working on that part.

Previous Posts in This Series on the 8.25 Mile Question:

Overview

Version 1: Hidden in the Mountains North of Santa Fe

Version 2: The Gravedigger

A Different Sense of Self

The Missing Hint - Part I