Passage 1
Sante re, New Mexico multimillionaire Fortest Fenn has always loved a good adventure. As asmall child before eight, he and his brother, Skippy spent summer vacations making exploration inYellowstone National Park.
As a teen, Fenn idolized the decorated World War II fighter pilot, called Robin Olds and latteremulated his hero during The Vietnam War as an Air fighter pilot to go to New Mexico and settledthere as an arts and antiques dealer, hunting down valuable paintings, rugs, war memorabilia, andother antique to sell.
In 1998, Fenn was diagnosed with terminal kidney cancer. As he had always been doing, heconceived a grand adventured that he assumed would be his last one. "I wanted to create someexcitement, some hope, before I died," says Fenn,82, adding that he also wanted to "get kids out ofthe game room and offthe couch." With those ideas in his mind, he started to devise a treasure hunt.
Little by little, Fenn began stocking a small bronze chest with gold coins, prehistoric braceletsand other valuable things. When his cancer went into remission in 1993, he decided he would carryout his plan anyway.
In 2010, Fenn topped offthe chest with jewels and valuable stones and hid it somewhere deepin the Rocky Mountains, north of Sante Fe. Later that year, he wrote a poem for his self-publishedmemoir, The Thrill of the Chase. It contained nine clues about the treasure box′ s whereabouts. Onestanza reads like this: Begin it where warm waters halt/And take it in the canyon down/Not far, buttoo far to walk/Put in below the home of Brown.
A few months later, a story about the treasure appeared in a magazine. Since then, Fenn hasreceived thousands of e-mails from treasure hunters. Some request more clues to the box. But mostly "people thanked me for bringing their family together," he says with a self-comforting smile on hisface.
In April, Fenn told a crowd at an Albuquerque bookstore that two groups of treasure huntershad
A.He enjoyed adventures and couldn' t help doing it.?
B.He wanted to help himself and game- and telly-addicted kids.?
C.He wanted to get the kids out of the game room to play with him.?
D.He thought it could bring him hope, excitement and a longer life