Yes, it’s the title of a book by the author of The Little Prince.  Antoine de Saint-Exupery was a pilot not unfamiliar with the Sahara.

I’d only learned of the book back in high school because of a friend in the next town reading it in french class.  (My little school only offered 2 years of spanish.)

I stopped at 2 libraries yesterday to find a copy of The Little Prince.   The 2 copies at the first one were nowhere to be found.  The second library, rather new and planted absolutely Too Far for anyone To Walk to, had none.  When I said I thought it was a classic, he said they didn’t really carry the classics.  Something to do with only putting brand new books in there, ones with tracking chips.  New World.

I stopped at my friend’s.  She looked for her french and german copies but thinks her sons may have them.  Not that my french and german are that adequate anymore, but there are on-line translators, right? (See Forrest Fenn’s Scrapbook # 47.

Okay.  I do have a copy or two myself—-in a box, in a barn, inaccessible at the moment, and I wanted to read it now.

I’d tried my Kindle, but it wasn’t available for download.  Last stop last night on my way home, Barnes and Noble.  Yay.

Oh.

It’s a new translation.  New cover.

Cover via Amazon

Choice:  Paperback.  Hardcover.  Set with recording by Viggo Mortenson.  Very tempting that, but I went with the cheapest version.

Okay.  Why go to all this trouble for a book I read ages ago?

Let me try to explain how mind mind works:

Mind Map …..   Free Association …..  Word Play

Case in point —-

Since Forrest used the word “fling” in his talk at Moby Dickens,

and reading the story of the sunken storage jar in Too Far To Walk,

and my earlier reading of Thunderhead, with its kivas,

and remembering the snakes writhing in the Indiana Jones movie,

Plant in White Sands National Monument, New Mexico, USA. The plant’s roots hold a pillar of sand in place, while the surrounding sands are shifted by wind erosion.

and someone I know opening the door to an old underground bunker at White Sands, intending to descend until he saw the floor moving; again, a mass of writhing snakes,

and finding a place called Snakeden Hollow,

and buying snake boots after stirring up a snake while morel hunting, actually, I should use a hiking staff instead of my bare hands to rake through leaves next to fallen trees next time.

Oops.  Getting off point there …. but, okay.  You get the idea.

So, I couldn’t remember the details of the story but I knew there was a snake and a star and a desert involved in the sad conclusion of The Little Prince.

“What makes the desert beautiful,” said the little prince, “is that somewhere it hides a well….”

So, back to “fling”.

I know there’s been a recent notice to disregard what Mr. Fenn might say in interviews, just rely on the Poem.  I think Dal believes, maybe Forrest said somewhere, that the treasure is hidden in the original spot he had chosen to rest his bones.  I know he’s said it’s a place “dear” to him.  And somewhere he mentioned desert.

Forrest Fenn’s Treasure Chest

Can I reconcile all these ideas?

Not easily.  I think it would take me more than four Xanax, a staff, and snake boots to fling myself into anyplace that might have a ‘moving floor’, even if there was a certain treasure chest in the middle of it.

“It is such a mysterious place, the land of tears.”

English: Saint Exupery monument in Tarfaya Рус…

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