Dreaming about Treasure
What is it about hunting for treasure that fascinates us? Is it the dream of becoming rich or just the thrill of adventure?
I grew up on some of the classic treasure movies, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Temple of Doom, Last Crusade, Romancing the Stone, King Solomons Mines, Candleshoe...
The idea of solving clues to achieve something, is that what draws us in? Is that why the current escape room fad has become so big?
I took part in an escape room about a year ago with my in-laws. It really was a cool experience. It is frustrating to be on a time limit, but the rush of solving a clue and discovering something new was really exhilarating.
I am a huge Clive Cussler fan. I will be honest, I am not much of a book reader, I wish I was, but I just don't usually have the attention span for it.
I can read a Clive Cussler book in record time though. Cussler is always able to tie in a treasure hunt to some political or corporate espionage plot. Dirk Pitt(or his other heroes) always sort everything out and it is a good fun read.
Two of my favorite Cussler books are Sahara(the book is better than the movie) and Inca Gold.
My wife came home from running some errands yesterday and I was sitting on the couch watching the movie National Treasure. It was towards the end of the movie and my wife was trying to tell me a story. She finally gave up saying "I can see you are busy". I came into the bedroom 10 minutes later and explained: "I just wanted to see them find the treasure".
Now, I have seen that movie dozens of times. They play it practically every night on SyFy channel right now, but I still just needed to see that moment when they walked into the treasure room. It still holds the same fascination the 10th time as it did the first time.
You can imagine how interested I was then when I first read about Forrest Fenn.
You can read the Wikipedia article for the full details, but the basic idea is this guy retired from the airforce and became an art dealer.
He made a substantial fortune and hid some of it in the Rocky Mountains and wrote a poem with clues to help people find it.
There is some speculation whether it is true or a hoax, and unfortunately, some people have died searching for it. I still find this situation fascinating though because in this case, the person who hid the treasure is still alive.
Many times we are just guessing and have no verification about the validity of clues. With Fenn though, he has said that people have been within 200 feet of finding the treasure. There is also the fact that he is willingly giving it away. Remember when The Atocha was found and the ensuing legal battle for the treasure. That wouldn't be the case here because Fenn is basically saying "finders keepers".
Now, as much as I would love to, I doubt my wife would sign off on me running off to the Rockies to search for treasure. That doesn't mean you can't though. Upon searching Steemit @leewilliamson has published his own post about Fenn and the treasure. In it, they include the verses of the poem that Fenn says leads to the treasure.
What about other countries? Steemians live all over the world, do you have tales of hidden or buried treasure in your own country? I'd love to hear about them in the comments! Thanks for reading!
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Yeah I love to watch treasure movies as well. Very interesting and adventurous.
Thanks...
I love looking for treasure as well and when I watched Indiana Jones I dreamt of becoming a treasure hunter/ archeologist.
We have a local lore called the Yamashita Treasure where a Japanese General was said to have looted and amassed gold bars from countries that Japan and hid it in a cave in Bataan/Cavite in the Philippines.
The location in our country changes.
It was said to be booby trapped with poison gas and the workers who helped transport it were killed to silence them and the soldiers sealed in the cave making them ghostly sentries.
I think it was made in a movie.
It sounds like it would be a great movie! It also sounds like it might have been included in the plot of one of Cusslers books. He tends to take stories from lore like that and weave them into his books.
We all have our ideas about 'hunting for treasure'. For me its buying these big Magic collections and digging the gold out of the crap. It is very rewarding when you find something. Everyone has their own perception of 'treasure'.
Very true! Like I said, I probably won't be out in the mountains digging about, but I like spending evenings at home with my wife and dog and camping with them. That is my treasure!
The treasure hunt instinct is what makes people buy things they don't even need that have a slashed price of 0.99$ and are now priced with big black letters as 1,99$.
Very true. Probably ties in to those extreme couponers too!
Great article! I think the thrill of the unknown with hunting for treasure is a big part of it. That is what makes it fun for me anyway, lol. If I could hunt where real treasure may be, then I would say that the possibility to hit big would be a big part but for now for me it is the unknown.
I collect crystals so "hunting" for them is always fun. We buy a lot of those kits where you chisel out the mineral to see your surprise.
Very cool! I have never seen those kits, but I might need to keep an eye out for them now. I know one of the big things now is to have a pearl party where you see if you can get a pearl from an oyster. Always searching for something of value!
They are pretty neat. We buy the small ones from Wal-Mart for my daughter, I end up digging it out though lol Oh yea! I forgot about the pearl parties, those are a super big hit.
@bozz fascinating one...India has always been a center of many tresure...the one I heard is the tresure hided beneath the pond in a jaipur palace, and the king filled the pond with greese .so tjat noone find it out...later on it was found after many attempts.
Oh really? So they did find it in the end? That is very cool! Thanks for sharing that story. That is the kind of response I was hoping to get from this post!
It was story that keep circulating over the years, even the tour guide of that palace tells similar story...there are still talks about the amount and quantity..itvwas bever been made public by then government
Very interesting!
India is lands of many stories...😉
I enjoy a little bit of treasure hunting myself. I got hooked after I started gold prospecting and I kept hearing these stories of treasure hunting from the other prospectors. There's a few of these stories I'd love to investigate more sometime, like the "lost ship of the Mojave"... but I just don't really have the time and motivation to make it happen. It can be a lot of work for really bad odds. lol.
For sure! I will have to look into the lost ship one you are talking about. Thanks for the comment and the great info! Prospecting would be a blast I bet. Probably pretty tedious though and like you said, probably not the best odds...
I do pretty decent with gold prospecting in the river, it's hard work but can pay off if you know what you're doing AND get lucky. Unlike treasure hunting I know there is gold in the river.
Treasure hunting is a lot more research and exploration for almost impossible odds, where you don't know if what you're searching for even exists! But the chances of a huge payout keeps people searching. Here's some of the basic info on that lost ship -
Awesome! Thank you.
Treasure hunt- what could be more fun than that. I also do room escapes. And for that hour I again become a boy, using my mind and imagination to have fun. I think that is the biggest plus of treasure hunting- waking up of your inner child
For sure! Thank you for the comment.
I think you can throw the people who buy storage lockers right in there with treasure hunters. I've bought a couple myself and it was the thrill of what was in them that you couldn't see when your bidding that keeps you going.
Mine didn't have any treasure but I still came out okay because I was buying ones with tools in them which I wanted.
Very cool. I used to watch "Storage Wars" pretty consistently. Although a lot of it was probably scripted, it was still fun to watch.
Now you don't even have to go stand at the place and bid, most of the storage auctions are online auctions.
Very cool!
Nah, I don't think I heard of any treasures hidden somewhere in my country. But during the history there was always a lot of piracy, so I wouldn't be surprised if somebody comes out with something dived out from some dark cave or bottom of a sea.
I am sure there has to be something laying at the bottom of the Adriatic there... :)