Glad to hear of the successful rescue of a searcher who got stuck in the snow out west! (See Dal’s site, Thrill of the Chase, for details.)
But hey, people. Could we not be doing things that might keep Forrest up at night! And his nephew Chip. And the other heroes. Just saying.
I’m only hunting morels and asparagas until the snow is melted in Yellowstone. (Can’t eat ’em, but, you know, it’s the thrill of the chase.)
Remind me not to whine about a little snow…..
I woke up At 6 AM on Sunday morning, groggily cursing daylight saving time for having robbed me of an hour’s sleep – as if I was innocently staying up till 1 AM the night before and it had snuck up on me. Like a ninja. But as my two caregivers – one disturbingly chipper and the other equally as grumpy as me – stuffed my lifeless limbs into layer after layer of winter clothing, I felt my mood begin to shift, for the early morning came with good purpose. Round two on the slopes awaited.
The nerves from the week prior were gone. Having cleared so many emotional hurdles on the last trip, I was looking forward getting my bearings on the bi-ski without the stress and pressure of such a momentous undertaking clouding my mind. We arrived early and met with the two volunteers who would be…
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Our good wishes to Rennelle continue.
Please accept my apologies for the tardiness of this response to the overwhelming gift of the raffle proceeds. I was away for awhile, and although I tried mightily to finish all of the thank-you cards and messages before I left, I didn’t quite succeed. My lack of a timely reply, however, in no way reflects the amount of my gratitude.
A cancer patient has a lot of different weights on his or her shoulders. In my case, there is the constant out-of-state travel to medical appointments, the daily battle to continue some sort of normality through the fog and sickness caused by years of chemotherapy, and, of course, the reality of the never-ceasing medical bills.
In a single, combined effort from all of you, one of my weights was lifted. To each and every person who participated in the raffle, please accept my heartfelt thanks for your contributions.
Many of you promoted the raffle on your respective blogs, and I want to thank you all for your work on my behalf. It would be logical to assume that so many searchers looking for a single prize would be ultra-competitive with each other! That may be, but you are also community-minded and came together to pull off an event that was successful beyond anyone’s imagination. You all have my respect, my admiration, and most of all, my thanks.
I’d also like to thank the Collected Works Bookstore and Dorothy Massey, who offered a lovely setting in which to host the raffle event. Suzanne Somers offered her support in the days leading up to the event, and I was humbled and grateful to receive her beautiful message. The lovely and gracious Ali McGraw was kind enough to participate in the drawing, and I was so very appreciative of her willingness to lend us her time. Thanks also to Toby Younis, who used his professional abilities to record the raffle event and stream it live. I watched it from my chemo chair and couldn’t contain my smiles.
Every day for several weeks, Dal Neitzel donated so much time to the raffle process that I doubt he ever slept! Dal, I am so appreciate of all your hard work and selfless efforts.
Renelle
______________________________________________________
Click here for her story in Forrest Fenn’s words.
Read more about the raffle here.
English: Actor, entrepreneur Suzanne Somers (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Wondering what Forrest did last weekend? Check out Forrest Fenn’s Scrapbook Fifty-Six over on Dal’s blog.
Who is Forrest Fenn? Here’s an interview with Fenn, the Pilot. Thank you Dal.
It brings to mind an earlier video I shared…..terrifying but really funny for those of us who have a slight fear of flying.
That’s what friends are for….. right?
You’ve nailed it! Won’t those searchers in Santa Fe be jealous?
To catch up on Rennelle’s Raffle, go to Toby’s blog for the videos. (Hint: the winner lives in Colorado)
With all the hoopla today about how cold it was going to be, I thought it might be fitting to open up my first ever Monday blog post with list of advantages to living in Wisconsin in the winter. By the way, anyone else notice that the coldest day on record since 1996 just happened to fall on a Monday? Just sayin’.
It is, indeed, a day to grind in the grim reality of at least 3 more months of cold and snow with nothing much to look forward to except that each passing day adds a couple more minutes of daylight. Oh, and a certain someone turns Nifty Fifty soon, so if you are the type that suffers from Seasonal Affective Disorder, and likes to spend money when you are depressed, feel free to buy me something cool.
1. No hurricanes in Wisconsin. Yay! Remind yourself of this as you walk to your car after work while the -50 degree wind…
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Intrepid’s Accommodations in the Boundary Waters near Canadian Border (NOT where warm waters halt)
Only 9 more days until someone’s lucky number gets pulled out of Forrest Fenn’s cowboy hat — at Collected Works Bookstore in Santa Fe — 2 pm Mountain Time, January 7th.
Toby will be broadcasting a live feed. Sign up at his blog, A Gypsy’s Kiss.
Latest numbers from Dal’s blog:
AS OF DECEMBER 29th, 4PM OUR “DO GOOD” CANCER FUND FOR RENELLE HAS
{Updated–$17,999.09 as of 6pm January 2,2014. Way to go, Chasers!)
Click here for more on Raffle for Rennelle.
Click here for a list of the contents of the prize jar.
Next item of business— Intrepidy
(NOT to be confused with my daughter, Intrepid or the crazy guy in the airplane….)
Forrest sent me this just before Christmas. Very cute. You may have seen this on the other blogs. Are there hints in it? Cautions?
A fun read, in his words —
“This is one tough gal. I asked her not to join the marines because it would not be fair to the enemy. f”
Click here: http://dalneitzel.com/2013/12/21/scrapbook-fifty-three/
And finally. What have I been doing over Christmas break?
A Norwegian Christmas, 1846 painting by Adolph Tidemand. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Trying to fit in a couple more Douglas Preston/Lincoln Child thrillers.
Here is the story behind the January 7th Raffle for a fellow Fenner. Posted on Forrest Fenn’s Old Santa Fe Trading Company. See Dal’s blog, Thrill of the Chase for updates:
When Renelle Jacobson stepped out of her car in my driveway, and walked toward me, I was charmed at first sight. Her smile telegraphed a timeless message: “Look out world, because here I come.” She had read about my hidden treasure in Hemispheres, the in-flight magazine for United Airlines, and, she said, “I ripped out the pages, stuffed them in my bag, and told the passenger sitting next to me, ‘Oh, I am SO going to find this when I get home.”
With a treasure-hunting partner, she soon hit the road for Yellowstone. “I was bouncing off the walls with an overload of excitement. This adventure is for every little girl and boy who have desperately wanted to look for a hidden treasure. I know I’m silly, but some of us are lucky enough to never completely grow up.” She returned from that first road trip empty-handed but, “We had a blast. I’ve since gone back 3 or 4 times.”
However, there is one small problem; Renelle, 41 and single, has a rare bone cancer called osteosarcoma. A few years of chemo and several surgeries didn’t kill the disease, so, in 2011, her left leg was amputated above the knee. She has a prosthetic leg but the ongoing cancer changes her limb shape. “Sometimes I can walk quite well and sometimes I can’t.”
A friend loaded her in his Bell helicopter and they searched the far reaches of Yellowstone Park.
“We discovered some top secret waterfalls (at least that’s how I romanticized them in my mind). They were out in the middle of nowhere.”
“We also flew over Hebgen Lake and had lunch in West Yellowstone. What a grand day for a cancer patient who is trapped inside most of the time.”
Renelle, whose constitution is made of sinew-tough fiber, is now in her 5th year of chemotherapy. With an expression that reflected her longing, she said to me, “I’m sick 3 to 4 days a week, have low energy the rest of the time and my sleep schedule is often turned upside down. Working on this treasure hunt has given me a way to occupy my time when I’m awake after midnight. When I work on your puzzle for an hour, I can say that I worked toward a goal.” She added, with a voice as soft as her eyes, “I’ll keep working on the poem every night until the moment when I can call my hunting buddies and say, ‘let’s hit the road.” Imagination is her pleasure and faith is her nourishment.
Renelle Jacobson inspires me in a singular way; her spirit holds me in thrall. Each day she tests the extremes in ways I can’t even imagine. To know her even a little bit, as I do, is to love her a lot.
To paraphrase Charlotte Bronte:
Her human heart has hidden treasures,
In secret kept, in silence sealed;
The thoughts, the hopes, the dreams, the pleasures,
Whose charms enrapture when revealed
Mr. Fenn signing my TTOTC.
I thought I’d pass along news of this effort in case you missed it.
Click here for the original post by Forrest Fenn — Salute to a Warrior.
Click here for Dal’s post regarding a raffle for Renelle’s benefit.
Forrest Fenn has donated one of his cast bronze jars for the prize and filled it with treasures found at San Lazaro pueblo.
2012.07.17-IMG_5034 (Photo credit: martin_kalfatovic)
Suzanne Sommers is flying in on January 7th to draw the prize-winning ticket from his cowboy hat. That event will be held at Collected Works Bookstore in Santa Fe.
Heartwarming how the searchers band together in this cold season!
English: Photo of a stone fireplace. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
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…
English: Omaha Beach landscape nowadays Русский: Пляж Омаха 67 лет спустя. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I just received this email. I mentioned this man in an earlier post.
………..
English: Omaha beach cemetery in Normandy, France. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Fossil Hunter Roy Chapman Andrews traveled Mongolia by camel and horse–fought packs of snakes–and discovered the terrifying Velociraptor!
Learn more here: http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2013/09/amazing-life-roy-chapman-andrews/
Forrest copied me on this colorful tale, so I’ll share it for those of you who haven’t seen Scrapbook Forty Six on Dal’s blog, Thrill of the Chase. It’s so Fenn!
I never go shopping…
But I was in Kaune’s grocery store with five items in my cart. Just a few things I needed to watch the Broncos play the Cowboys: pepperoni, bologna, Tabasco, salami and horseradish.
As I approached the check out counter, a shapely twentyish-looking woman raced past me. Her pushcart was loaded with six-packs of Corona beer. She wore tight shorts and slosh sandals, but it was her large hair – garish red and full of curlers – that struck me. The curlers were mostly white but a few were brown, and her piercings and tattoos introduced me to a world I had rarely seen before. I told myself I had to get out more.
As I slowed my cart to prevent a wreck, Mz Fashion Maven gave me a grin that said my 83 years were no match for her youth and exuberance.
The checkout line moved slowly and the delay gave me time to observe Mz Maven, who seemed to be annoyed by my preoccupation with the objects that decorated her hair. As we stood there looking at each other, I politely asked, pointing to her hair, “How many stations can you get on that thing?”
Zowee, I quickly regretted the question as the color in her face started to match her hair tint. Suddenly she looked like she had an itch in a place she couldn’t scratch. It really bothered me when she yelled, “How dare you…!” (expletives deleted) in a loud and commanding voice.
When all of the shoppers started staring at me, I wanted them to see that my hands were in my pockets and had been there for a long time. I was embarrassed and slowly backed away. Outside I watched from behind a truck of watermelons until Mz Maven loaded her supplies beside a chainsaw in the back of her pickup truck. As she pulled out, I saw she had a bumper sticker that read: Practice Beauty & Random Acts of Pleasure.
I munched on saltine crackers while the Broncos beat the Cowboys by three points. I’ve decided to stay at home more. f “
Heated curlers in Schenzhen, China (Photo credit: Pondspider)
I told Forrest it sounded like a chapter for his next book. Title? How about “If You Are Brave.”
(Do the saltines mean he left without the health food?)
English: Curlers in Innisfail, Alberta. L-R back row: Mr. Fairley; Billy Wilson. L-R front row: Mr. Agnew; John A. Simpson (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
A U.S. Air Force Sikorsky HH-53C Super Jolly Green Giant helicopter being refueled over Vietnam. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
This was a footnote on the previous post, but I think it deserves more attention——-Forrest Fenn was the rescuee.
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