170-Year-Old Champagne Recovered (and Tasted) From a Baltic Shipwreck

Posted on May 30, 2015 by waterhigh

Worth the cold — the bottles auctioned at up to 100,000 Euros.

The term “vintage” may now have a whole new meaning for wine lovers—a treasure trove of 170-year-old champagne has been unearthed from the bottom of the sea. In 2010, a group of divers in the Baltic Sea happened upon the remains of a sunken trade schooner just off the coast of Finland. Scattered amongst the wreckage 160 feet below the surface, they discovered a treasure sent from Dionysus himself—168 bottles of French bubbly that had aged in near perfect conditions for decades.

Although the local government ultimately claimed the bottles, a team of scientists led by Philippe Jeandet, a professor of food biochemistry at the University of Reims, was able to obtain a small sample of the preserved beverage for testing—and tasting. Their chemical and sensory analysis, published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, provides a unique lens into the past, offering information about conventional winemaking…

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A Fresh Interview with Forrest Fenn

Posted on April 29, 2015 by waterhigh

Forrest Fenn’s Treasure Chest

Click on this link for a TV reporter’s interview with the man who hid the treasure.

Mr. Fenn signing my TTOTC.

New Clue??? Tune in This Afternoon! Forrest Speaks

Posted on February 4, 2015 by waterhigh

Dude!

New Clue???

February 4th, 2015

News from Dal’s blog. Forrest will be on Huffington Post LIVE via web-cam about 4:45 ET this afternoon. (That would be 3:45 CST; 2:45 pm Santa Fe time; and you west-coasters can figure it out yourselves.)

Here’s a link —

http://live.huffingtonpost.com/

UPDATE

A fun interview with 2 professional treasure hunters and a treasure hider — Forrest Fenn.

Watch it yourself here — Huffington Post LIVE interview

The Point

Posted on January 26, 2015 by waterhigh

Thorns and Ice

“The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.” – W.B. Yeats

From “Beowulf” (The Other Beowulf)

Posted on January 12, 2015 by waterhigh

A Year In Verse

From “Beowulf and the Fire-Dragon”:

Hold thou now fast, O earth,now men no longer can,
The treasure of mighty earls.From thee brave men won it
In days that are long gone by,but slaughter seized on them,
Death fiercely vanquished them,each of my warriors,
Each one of my people,who closed their life-days here
After the joy of earth.None have I sword to wield
Or bring me the goblet,the richly wrought vessel.
All the true heroes haveelsewhere departed!
Now must the gilded helmlose its adornments,
For those who polished itsleep in the gloomy grave,
Those who made ready erstwar-gear of warriors.
Likewise the battle-sarkwhich in the fight endured
Bites of the keen-edged bladesmidst the loud crash of shields
Rusts, with its wearer dead.Nor may the woven mail
After the chieftain’s deathwide with a champion rove.
Gone is the joy of harp,gone is the music’s mirth.
Now the hawk goodly-wingedhovers not through the…

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The Sonnets

Posted on October 26, 2014 by waterhigh

Forrest Fenn is writing poetry again. I’d love to watch over his shoulder and see him at work. Is it a messy process with lots of words crossed out? Or does he compose it in his head and only write what works? Does he adhere to form or formula? Or is he a free spirit, free verse wordsmith?

English: Title page of Shakespeare’s Sonnets (1609) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Photo credit Wikipedia

Apparently William Shakespeare worried about leaving a legacy. At least the young man narrating the Bard’s first dozen or three sonnets did. He stood gazing marvelously in the mirror, pondering, and concluded that he’d just have to get married and have a son. {Okay. That’s more abbreviated than even a Cliff’s Notes version.} But, it made me think of the last chapter in Forrest Fenn’s Too Far To Walk where he gazes with marvel(?) in his mirror in a closing poem.

Legacy~~~

“Oh very young. What will you leave us this time?” Cat Stevens

Riddle Me This

Posted on October 7, 2014 by waterhigh

Is the poem a riddle? Not a classic Who am I or What am I, but Where am I?

In which case, the first stanza would say something like I, the chest, went in there empty and then I went in there filled.

Which raises the next question—the critical point of it all—in There, aka the Secret Where.

If Forrest wrote the poem as if it was a classic riddle, he might have imagined himself as the box personified and given clues accordingly. Does this hold up?

So, if the bronze chest is speaking to you, (no, I haven’t gone ‘um die ecke’, not yet anyway), and says “Take it in the canyon down”, “it” can’t be the chest, right? Or, then again, “take it” might mean carry the chest . Different train of thought….

More wordplay? Google –How to Write a Riddle Poem, etc.

Up My Creek

Posted on September 26, 2014 by waterhigh

Play day.

A week and a half late but a perfect day for it.

(Inre: Warm waters/Putting In— I made a less than graceful re-entry after the picnic lunch. I need more practice.)

Monarch Butterfly Danaus plexippus Purple Coneflower 3008 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Monarchs everywhere lately!

Once the harvest is over, I may have more time for the Chase.

All Wet

Posted on September 15, 2014 by waterhigh

Just Ducky

So. We were going to celebrate 35 today by taking the kayaks out. A little rain never stopped us. (It’s not like it’s a ‘gully-washer’ or ‘toad-drownder’, as our OK friends would say.) Thunder and lightning, ( or ice,) though, is another story.

Kulusuk, Greenland. The old and the new: kayak ontop of a dogsled. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

But, as an old man once said (everyday of his life), “It’s a good day for it.”

Maybe. Maybe it’s a good day for frogs, toads, and other hoppy things.

Froggy Serenade?

Too Far To Walk

Yep, and later we might go out for pizza.

“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.” –Heraclitus

Ephesus on the coast of Asia Minor, birthplace of Heraclitus (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Where the Wild Thyme Blows

Posted on September 7, 2014 by waterhigh

Thyme

I know a bank where the wild thyme blows….

Wm. Shakespeare

No wild times in Santa Fe next month. The Fenn gathering at the Loretto Inn and Spa has been canceled.

I’d like to have attended, and not just to meet the competition, though that in itself might prove fascinating.

And not that it would have been really wild, but you never know.

English: Wild thyme in the flower bed of a “garden à la française” in the park of the castle of Champs-sur-Marne (Seine-et-Marne), France. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Where Do I Begin…

Posted on August 7, 2014 by waterhigh

Clues, bei Syke (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Where to begin?

Where did Forrest begin when he wrote the poem? With the first clue, or the ninth?

“I knew all along where I wanted to hide the treasure so I didn’t need a map or any information to write the poem. Everything was in my head. It took me a while to get the wording exactly how I wanted it. Counting the clues and hiding the chest came later. It is not likely that anyone will find it without following the clues, at least in their mind.” Forrest Fenn

{So, in my mind, it sounds like it’s possible to solve this treasure hunt from a distance, which is good news for people in the Midwest, or Europe, or any other of the xxx countries you visitors are from.)

Also, maybe the number of clues isn’t so important?? I don’t know.}