$1 Million | 1

How are you, I mean, how are you feeling right now? We're on the way. Scared? Why? Scared. I just don't want anything to go wrong. And... That's it. Safety. You ever find yourself in one of those situations where if it goes well, there's a huge reward. But if it goes bad, you look just unforgivably stupid. Like, what were you possibly thinking? I'm in a car with some guys I don't know on the way to somewhere we're not supposed to be. And this is one of those situations.

There's four of us, all jammed into a tiny four-door truck. Daryl, Harry, George, I'm Peter. We drove all night to get here. Hey, this is not funny. I go to prison for this shit. This is not fucking funny to me. But you didn't even tell him. I understand, but look. You didn't tell which way to go, dude. I understand that, but I'm just saying right now, this needs to be serious. I'm paying you guys well for this, so. Okay. It's all good.

I need no attention drawn to this vehicle. So, let's meet everybody. Daryl Seiler is the one risking jail time. This isn't some bank heist. We're actually at the entrance to Yellowstone National Park. We're not supposed to be here because a judge recently ordered Daryl to steer clear of the park for five years. We'll get to that. Thing is... Somewhere on the other side of this entrance is a million dollars. We'll get to that too. Harry Greer is driving. He's the guy with the smoker's voice.

He's been in and out of prison his whole life, has no problem playing it cool. Then there's George Boyd, a friend of Daryl's, just sort of here for the ride. How invested in this do you feel? He just asked me from the club last weekend. I mean, this weekend. How did he ask you? I need your help to drive to get this treasure. And you just said? Sure. Okay. My name is Peter Frickwright. It's hyphenated. We'll get to know each other better later on, but for now...

Just know that back in 2014, when this was recorded, I was a writer and journalist, but just starting out. The kind of writer and journalist that borrows money to keep his cell phone turned on. A few months before this, I had read about this treasure hunt. A million dollars hidden in the Rocky Mountains. And Daryl's banishment from the park. So I went to talk with him. And my timing was kind of incredible.

because I reached out at almost exactly the same time that Daryl figured out where it was. He just needed to go get it. So now I'm in Yellowstone. watching for park ranchers. The plan is for Harry and George to drop me and Daryl on the side of the road. And then we'll duck out of sight to put on snowshoes and hike about a mile to this treasure. But if a ranger sees us walking off the road into the snow...

that probably means questions about what we're doing. He might ask to see some ID. If he does, Daryl goes to jail. All right, let's see if they pass us. They pass us. Harry pulls over. We jump out. And that's pretty much the end of the story I thought I was telling.

Before we get too much further into this, here's some background on this thing we're looking for. The Forest Fen Treasure. What if we told you there was a treasure chest full of gold and jewels waiting to be found somewhere in the mountains north of Santa Fe? Forrest Fenn is an 87-year-old former fighter pilot who made his fortune selling art and antiques. He says that in 2010 he hid a treasure chest somewhere in the Rocky Mountains. You can think of this whole thing as a kind of game.

Forrest Fenn simply created it and set the rules. And he did this by filling a chest about the size of a box of cereal, with gold coins, jewels, trinkets, and nuggets from his personal collection. And then he hid it in one of four states, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, or New Mexico. The only clues to the treasure hidden in a 24-line poem from Fenn's autobiography, The Thrill of the Chase.

As I have gone alone in there and with my treasures bold, I can keep my secret where and hint of riches new and old. We're going to spend a whole episode with Finn. But for now, just know that there are nine clues in the poem. But no one knows which lines are the clues. Begin it where warm waters halt and take it in the canyon down. Not far, but too far to walk. Put in below the home of Brown. This all really happened.

Fenn came up with it shortly after he was given a particularly bad cancer diagnosis in the 1980s. A two-hour operation turned into a five-hour operation. I lost a kidney, and my doctor told me that I had a 20% chance of living three years. But he didn't want to end his life in a hospital. So in an early version of the poem, the treasure was hidden in the spot he'd gone to die. I would love if somebody found it tomorrow. But if nobody found it for 100 years, that's okay with me too.

Thing was, Finn survived the cancer, and that put the treasure hunt on hold. Until around 2010, when he turned 80, and decided it was time to hide the treasure, publish the poem, and invite the world to come play his game. The New Mexico mountains have always attracted nature lovers, but the pristine wilderness has never seen so many explorers. History is full of treasure hunts.

but none quite like this one, and it became a phenomenon. I mean, coming into this series, there's a good chance that you already knew the name Forrest Fenn. This was the kind of quirky riddle Taylor made for social media. and internet forums, and magazine writers like me. It seems like it made the rounds every 18 months. And each time it did, it was like a new cohort of people started scheming and solving over different solutions.

Going down the rabbit hole on a puzzle that would only ever have one solver. Or none. But this poem is the rare treasure map designed not to obscure a location and safeguard a fortune. but capture the imagination and lodge in your brain. So even with a million dollars at the end of it, for a lot of hunters, it wasn't really about the money, but proving themselves. against a made-up mystery. But it's possible to want something too much. And Daryl Seiler gave it absolutely everything he had.

This is Missed Fortune, an Apple original podcast from High Five Content, 30 Minutes West, and Outside Magazine. I'm Peter Frickright.

Do you mind if we turn off the TV? Just for the sound. Oh, yeah. Thanks. When I first met Daryl, on the surface, he didn't seem like the type of person who was going to be particularly good at solving anything. He was just a guy. If a gray-haired, light-skinned Denzel Washington stopped caring, that's Daryl. Good-looking, but hasn't shaved or gotten dressed. Sports on TV, but he's not watching them.

Pinecone air fresheners in the bathroom, but you get the sense he didn't buy them. We're at his apartment in a complex just outside Seattle, and it's a nice enough place. New carpet, cheap blinds. The kind of place a corporate middle manager lands after a divorce, conveniently located on the path of least resistance. How does a guy like this end up running from the law in Yellowstone?

And then let's go back to the beginning. Absolutely. Can you tell me what you're doing in your life and then when you heard about this and got started? Sitting at work one day, the desk job that I have, I'm a recruiter. I recruit engineers for aerospace companies. Just like how most everyone with a desk job gets most of their information, Daryl heard about the Fenn treasure.

while looking at the internet instead of working. In February 2013. Yeah, up came this new story that said it would $2 to $3 million get you off the couch and into nature. I took some time and read that this was an eccentric older gentleman that decided he wanted to get family and kids and folks off the couch and out in nature. And he decided to...

take a small part of his net worth and amass different collectible items, put it in a bronze box, hide it, and then write a poem. And then if you figure out the poem... You can go find it. He showed his friends at work, and they were into it. Even his boss. They wouldn't go home and do research, but they would, hey, what you've got? What do you think? What have you learned this week? What's going on with it? Don't do this during work hours, but let me know where you're at.

Type of thing. So that's how it started. On the surface, Fenn's poem is relatively straightforward. A rhyming literary treasure map with nine sequential clues. There's debate about which of the 24 lines are clues, but most searchers agree the starting point is begin it where warm waters halt. Forrest has even said that that's the first clue you need to figure out.

Begin it where warm waters halt and take it in the canyon down. And from there, the next couple clues are pretty clear too. You're looking for a canyon down. Would you take not far, but too far to walk, to some sort of home of Brown? The solution is simple, according to Fenn. He says a kid could solve it. Not that anyone's been asking them.

One early popular theory goes that warm waters might be a lake or reservoir that's been warmed up in the sun. Because the water that flows through a dam comes from the bottom of the reservoir, where it's cold. So maybe that's warm water halting? Hard to say. Up next, Canyon Down. And most canyons are formed by water flowing through them. So Canyon Down isn't too hard. You just follow the water downhill. Except, didn't the water just halt? So maybe you're looking for a dry canyon. Or maybe not.

The more you look into this stuff, the more it's clear that almost any interpretation of any piece of the poem can be justified. I mean, the next clue is, put in below the home of Brown. And the American West is littered with things named after brown trout and brown bears and settlers named Brown. Early on in the hunt, Fen had to come out and tell searchers not to go digging up outhouses. Because, you know...

Home of Brown. Poop. So rather than study geography, Daryl started by studying Fenn. Basically submerging himself in Fenn's life for a month. So I learned a lot about him. That's number one. His interests, his likes. So I learned a little bit about, he's not a degreed archaeologist, but that's what he does. And it's where he made his fortune.

Going out and digging in old caves and finding things and displaying them in his gallery, and that's how he made his millions. After researching Fenn, Dale decided to focus his search on Yellowstone. Fenn had spent his summers there fly fishing as a kid. It just seemed to mean more to him than anywhere else. Remember, this spot was originally going to be his grave site. So he started taking friends to drive out and look around.

It's a 13-hour drive from here to there. A 13-hour drive up there, it goes by like that. You're laughing, you're joking, you're dreaming the whole time. You've got these... Gosh, what's my new car going to look like? What am I going to say to the media when they find out? All these things are going through your head. On the way back, you're tired. You're wet. You're hungry.

And you're, damn, why did I take this trip? This is a whole different trip on the way back. But almost as soon as each trip was over, Daryl was back to deciphering clues. And as the trip stacked up... He started making progress. Instead of a reservoir, Daryl found a former hot spring up in the mountains, the most literal version of warm water. And that flowed down to Icebox Canyon.

A spot so shaded and cold that the water froze into icicles for much of the year. It halted. It hit me like a ton of bricks. What happens when you put warm water in the icebox? It freezes. it halts it freezes simple easy so um and here's the the second clue so begin it where warm waters halt and take it in the canyon down

Follow Icebox Canyon downhill, and it's not far, but too far to walk, about nine and a half miles, to the Lamar Ranger Station. The next clue is, so take it in the canyon down. Not too far, too far to walk. So... Put in below the home of Brown. Oddly enough. Guess what? Ranger Gary Brown lived at the Lamar Ranger Station from 1965 to 1967. It was his home.

His home, it's in here, the ranger station. These days, you can find endless interpretations of these clues online. I'm not spilling any secrets here. But back in 2014, it was just Daryl. And this interpretation of these clues is really, really strong. Three clues, all in a row, all potentially solvable by kids. No special knowledge required besides what you can read in a book.

And there was more. The next clue was, from there, it's no place for the meek. No place for the meek. Right here on this is really cool. There's a bridge right here going over the river. Yeah, I can see it. There's a sign. And it shows the old wagon trains crossing the Lamar River when it was all raging. And, you know, they had to come this way. Part of the Oregon Trail and part of the way that people came this way. This part of the park, Daryl said, was no place for the meek.

It was another straightforward clue pointing directly at the Lamar Valley in Yellowstone. He started driving out there every chance he got. I would leave on a Friday right after work at 5 o'clock, and I'd be getting back without any sleep the entire weekend on Monday morning at 8. and getting to work just in time. How did you do that? Enthusiasm, drive, lots of five-hour energy. And then, you know.

First few times, you know, it's 8 o'clock, but then a couple of times, you know, due to the past being closed or something happened, now I'm getting to work on Monday at noon. And then people start to worry, hey, okay. You know, you need to slow this down or use vacation time for this and that type of thing. And I started to worry myself too. And you, you know, for the longest time, I'd say about a year, I didn't bring the subject up.

Because all I heard was, are you still doing that? Are you still making those trips way out there? What are you doing? What he was doing, most of the time, was trying to figure out the next few lines of the poem. But now that people were scrutinizing his time... Daryl didn't want anyone to know how much he was spending on it. So he hid it, told everyone he wasn't searching anymore, but that he was spending way less time on it. But this was actually a well-known treasure hunting technique.

called lying. Because he was hooked. You know, I've been a guy that wasn't involved in, you know, the whole drug scene and all of that. My former career was law enforcement and stuff. And so to me, I could, for the first time. feel like oh this is what these guys that get high all the time must feel like because it really was

life for me. It was all coming together. This is something I really wanted to do. It involved researching something, developing it, and then taking this arduous trip. I mean, it's just a constant Your mind is just racing and developing. And it's just, I felt if I could do this as a job, I mean, I'd be the happiest man in the world. So the highs are really, really high, really high.

How is this hunting for the treasure different than, like, gambling? Not a damn thing different. My mom is a gambler. My brother is a huge gambler problem. Hell, I got into that a while. Anybody with... Any sort of a closeness to an addictive personality, something that you enjoy, that your mind and your body enjoys, no different whatsoever.

No different. You're hiding it from the people that care about you. You're having to decoy it. You're having to lie about it. It consumes you when you're asleep, when you're awake. You want to talk about it, but you can't. There's guilt, there's happiness, there's lows. I mean, there's nothing different. And you really just can't, there's no answer to it. And a fix until something drastic happens. I mean.

Gosh, you know, and one thing did. I mean, I got fired. And here, Daryl is employing another treasure hunt technique called vastly understating what happened. Because he didn't just get fired. In April 2014, Darrell was checking out a spot on the other side of the Lamar River, which snakes through the valley. So he drove out with a woman named Christy Strawn, plus two friends.

And I thought I did enough research on the river, on the area that we're going to go, the route we're going to take. I didn't do enough. The Lamar is not a huge river, but it's too big and deep and serious to wade across. And Daryl can't swim. So they brought two inflatable rafts. And the second raft, we didn't know, and I didn't know, we didn't check, had holes in it. This is just how these things go on a hunting trip with Daryl.

Interpreting the poem is easy for him. It's going outside that's hard. The original plan had been for Christy to take a rope to the other side, so they could set up a line and pull themselves across. And credit where it's due, a high line is technically the right way to safely get across swift water. Thing was, they'd forgotten to give Christy the rope when she paddled to the other side.

And now, with rapids just downstream and the current ripping around a bend, she couldn't make it back. Now it's beginning to snow. It's getting dark. We're trying, throwing ropes way across to get to where we're... everything we can. She forgot her jacket. She didn't take her backpack. It's getting dark. So now I'm like, okay. They tried everything they could think of to reach her. And eventually Daryl sent the two friends to go get help.

But then he was left just watching her from the other side of the river. It's getting dark. I had to make a choice. I either die trying to get across to her or live with. that she went across there and I didn't go over there and try to help. Sometime after dark, he decided no one was coming and blew up the raft as best he could. Pushing off for the other side...

Almost immediately, he was spinning and bouncing downstream until he dumped. I hit the water and it was just like... the most painful thing it was like an ice pick going through my ear um going through my head it hurt so bad and I hit the bottom and I scraped my chest on the bottom and I was so cold and and

I mean, I couldn't even dog paddle. Remember, it's the middle of the night, it's snowing, and Daryl can't swim. He's scared out of his mind, about to drown on a wild river. And there's nothing he can do about it. And all of a sudden, like... and this is you know i'm getting spiritual here um like somebody grabbed me by the back of my neck and all of a sudden my toes are touching the bottom you know of the sand and it's just barely and um i've got like

two kicks and one of these in, and I could see the shore. But he wasn't out of it yet. He pulled himself out of the water, and Christy ran downstream to meet him. There's snow everywhere, he's soaking wet, and everything hurts. He's so cold. I was thinking so much I couldn't talk, and finally I said, fire. When the sun finally came up...

Christy eventually got a small fire going with some branches on the shore, and they huddled back to back on the river rocks. As the fire got bigger, a park ranger showed up, called search and rescue to get them out. So we're in the ambulance. We're there for an hour warming up. They're getting the story of what happened, all that stuff. So at the end of the thing, are we in trouble? At that point, they made it sound like...

We're going to write you a ticket, but you're not in that much trouble. And they weren't in that much trouble. There's a search and rescue in Yellowstone more than once a week, on average. The rangers wrote him tickets for the shovel and metal detector Daryl had in his pack, and the inflatable raft, which turns out is also forbidden on the rivers in Yellowstone. But it was just one condition of their punishment.

That was a problem for Daryl. So we were able to leave that day. The one thing that they said is, hey, when you get back, what's going to happen is that you're going to talk to a prosecutor, you probably won't have to go to court, you're going to pay a fine, but they're going to ban you for five years. Because we had to rescue you. Well, we just talked about addiction. Banning, huh?

Wait a minute. This is my spot. This is my treasure. You say I can't come back here for five years. I made a mistake. You know, we made a mistake and we had to get rescued. But you're going to do that. So I called the prosecutor. This is what he said. Give me a call in two weeks and I'll let you know what's going to happen. But we're going to ban you.

Whoa, oh shit. Well, I better find this treasure before two weeks. They came back 12 days later. But this time, they were smarter about it. They found a shallow part of the river to cross. They went straight to their spot. They didn't mess around. But they did get started kind of late. And by the time they did their search and started heading back, it was getting dark. And by this time we got our flashlights because we need them. And we're, you know, kind of walking where we're going.

and we're like shit and we're walking in into the water and we can't see where it's deeper now we're looking some places we're going oh shoot we can't trust this what we're gonna do and um so we she comes up with the idea let's make a raft There are regulations against bringing a raft to Yellowstone. But building one? That felt like a gray area. We built this awesome freaking raft. I mean, this thing could hold 50 people. It's 30.

It's 100 yards from the freaking river. Because that's where the wood was, right? While building their raft, they hadn't actually thought about getting it to the river. And dragging it over pretty much ruined it. it jumbles and oh my gosh all this work went to hell by the time we got it to the water well now it's super dark we can't cross um we can't do anything what we're gonna do is you know what we're just gonna find a safe area to sit in

We're going to stay up back to back and we're just going to wait till daylight. And it's about 10, 1030, 11 o'clock. And we'll wait till daylight and we'll take turns napping. And, you know, if we hear anything, we'll turn on the flashlight. And that's what we did. That's right. Shortly after their rescue from the banks of the Lamar River, Daryl and Christy spent another night on the banks of the Lamar River. If a park ranger showed up, it was not going to be a good look. And all of a sudden...

Daryl Seiler, Christy Strawn, wake up. What time is this? This is daylight, so 6.30 now. And they're across the river. Stay there. Don't run. Run? I'm not going to run. We're going to send the boat to rescue you. No, no, no, no. We don't need rescue. We're good. We know it's daylight. We can just cross it. No, no, no. Stay there. What?

We don't need a rescue. Guys, we don't do that. Last time, you guys are great last time. We don't need that. We know where to cross. You know, it's not like the last time. This is calm, flat. It's like, you know, crossing a pond. Pond or not.

The Rangers called search and rescue. And a couple hours later, hauled Christy and Daryl across. And now it was clear that they were in real trouble. Turn around, put your hands behind your back, you're under arrest. I've been a good guy all my life. Never been in jail. Never been in trouble. And here I am squished in the back of a police car because of this treasure hunt. So you talk about the lows of lows. That was the beginning of the lowest time of my life. Very low.

The park charged him with more than a dozen violations, including reckless endangerment, illegal camping, and possession of a metal detector in the backcountry, and shipped Daryl and Christie off to jail. where they both spent several days waiting to go before a judge. The park made an example out of them, basically. Daryl and Christy don't talk anymore. And once he was out, Daryl lost his job.

then his apartment, and eventually found himself sleeping in his car or on friends' couches. But at his court date, the judge made one thing clear. Whatever hardships he was going through in the rest of his life, If Daryl got caught coming back to Yellowstone, the judge would make all that look like nothing. Which is, of course, right around the same time Daryl had a breakthrough.

So one thing that I learned about Forrest, going back to that whole thing, is that there are certain things that he'd say over and over and over again. And I took that to heart. Let me stop and think about that. And one thing that he said, one line that he said continuously, and I don't know if he may say it with you, is that the person who finds this chess will have studied, thought, and analyzed.

the poem and moved with confidence. And there's a specific way he said it every single time the exact same way. So I wrote it down. The breakthrough came when Daryl stopped trying to solve the poem. Or at least he stopped trying to solve the clues in order. With his hot spring flowing down to Icebox Canyon, he figured he had where warm waters halt. And that led Canyon Down to a home of Brown on the Lamar River. So Daryl figured he had to be in the right area.

So he started looking for distinct spots that would make sense, where he could be confident he had the exact right location. The very first line of the poem says that I can hint of treasures. New and old. New, I thought was his. Old, I put with archaeology and paleontology. So now I'm thinking he's mixing this treasure with old treasure. And so now you start, okay, and let me start on that theme. What are old things that happened or scientific?

Things that happened in Yellowstone or in my area that are of importance, that would have moved him. Basically, he was trying to cut a corner and jump from the middle of the poem to the final location. by finding something nearby that was meaningful to Fenn. Um, title of the article, Confidence in the Past. What Daryl eventually found was an article about the Lamar Cave.

It's a place where a scientist named Elizabeth Hadley had studied fossilized bones to figure out how climate change affects the genes of different mammals. Confidence in the past. The finder will move with confidence. It was like Fenn was talking to him through a research paper. The poem doesn't mention a cave, but as a hiding spot, it made a lot of sense for a lot of reasons.

The exact location of the Lamar Cave is not widely publicized. And Fenn made his fortune digging up old stuff in caves. This is what Forrest does. He digs up old... Bones and fossils. And why wouldn't a man, an elderly man, want to put his treasures that mean a lot to him that he's collected over the years and place them? in or near a place that means a lot to history. So Daryl had confidence in this cave. And on one of his searches, he found one in the right area.

When the treasure wasn't there, he searched all around it, taking pictures of everything. Back at home, sometimes instead of trying to figure out the poem, he'd just look at the pictures. And late one night... Right before I showed up to interview him, he saw the chest, tucked into a little crevice on a cliff maybe 15 feet off the ground, held in place with a bracket, right next to a faint, rough X.

scratched into the vertical rock. Okay, that's the first thing that caught my eye. That looks too perfect to be natural. Leaf or twig or something. Why is it so perfect? It's almost a 90 degree angle. It did look man-made, but the photo was blurry enough that I still had some doubt. Daryl, however, had none. Banned by a judge or not, he was going to have to make one last trip.

And I was going to go with him. Because if this story didn't work, I was close enough to the edge that I wasn't sure how much longer I was going to get to be a writer. I mean, I see it. It's... It's pretty pixelated. Right. It wasn't just desperation, though. Compared with every other solution I had read, Daryl's first few clues were really strong. He probably was in the right area.

And the Lamar Cave had Forrest Fenn gravesite written all over it. But when it comes to the photo, he's seeing what he wants to see. And damn the consequences. Either because he thinks he's above the law... Or maybe it's that if he can't look for this thing, he doesn't care what happens to him. And I want to know more about that. What did Forrest Fenn unleash on the world when he hit a chest and wrote a poem?

What's Daryl really chasing? What are the consequences if you are found? Jail. I think it's up to five years. They wouldn't give me that, but they'd probably give me at least a year. I mean, a year in jail is no joke. No, it's not. No, it's no joke. And I just, I mean, to... To be honest and just like a human being more than a reporter right now, I mean, your picture is really pixelated. Like, I don't, you know, I would go with you.

to do a story, but if I had money involved and, like, consequences, if that were me, I don't think I would go. Sophie Gill, let's do this. Let's say, if I'm right, if it's there... You got to take care of all the lunches coming back. Something simple like that. Within reason. I can agree to that. Yeah. I mean, we're talking about McDonald's and, you know, I'm stopping at the Met every city. I want to get back. You know, you think I want to linger? So.

We'll go live from the Golden Arches as I'm getting my McFlurry and my, you know, Big Mac and large fries. It'll be fun. Everybody wants this treasure hunt to be fun. To live in a world where that's all there is to it. And it is fun. If your idea of fun is solving a riddle, but along the way, losing everything. That's next time.

Missed Fortune is an Apple original podcast produced by High Five Content in association with 30 Minutes West and Outside Magazine. The show is written and hosted by me, Peter Frickwright. with writing, editing, composing, and sound design by Robbie Carver. Story editing by Michael May. Additional editing by Alex Ward and Tiara Darnell. Additional production by Anne Bailey.

Fact-checking by Matt Giles. Final mix by Stephen Cray. Michael Derman is our line producer. Accounting by Matt Rock. Additional consulting from Gene McHale-Waite. The executive producer for High Five Content is Andrew Jacobs. Executive producers for 30 Minutes West are Peter Frickwright and Robbie Carver. Thanks to Outsides Editor-in-Chief, Chris Kyes, and Michael Roberts, Director of Audio. Legal services provided by Chris Keen and Diana Palacios. Listen and follow on Apple Podcasts.

And if you like the show, leave us a review.