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Trampled by Turtles’ Songs Were Born in the Wilds of Minnesota

Jessica McGee — Thu, 01 May 2025 14:00:09 +0000

In 1941, Swiss engineer George de Mestral was hunting in the Alps with his dog, when he noticed burrs stuck to his jacket, pants, hat, and his pup. Being the egghead that he was, de Mestral examined the burrs under a microscope. He discovered their “stickiness” was due to tiny hooks and loops. This discovery dominated the next decade of de Mestral’s life as he burrowed his intellect into recreating burrs’ “grab-ability” with synthetic materials. And on one magical day, Presto Chango!, the world has Velcro.

This is probably the most famous example of “biomimicry,” the imitation of nature’s strategies to solve human design challenges. Now, a less well-known example but a much more intriguing one (sorry, de Mestral) is the life and music of “Land of 10,000 Lakes” local Dave Simonett, founder and lead singer of Trampled By Turtles.

Simonett grew up in Mankato, Minnesota, about 80-miles southwest of the Twin Cities at the confluence of the Minnesota and Blue Earth rivers. Like the rest of the state, winters there are bitterly cold, summers are hot, muggy, and buggy. And as is ever the Minnesotan way, Simonett spent his youth loving that unloveable weather. No matter Mother Nature’s temperament, Simonett was in the woods. When he formed Trampled By Turtles in Duluth in 2003, Simonett’s lifelong connection to nature—hiking, skiing, fishing—combined in his music with other influences, like his love of the in-your-face tempo of punk and grunge bands and the songwriting of legendary fellow Minnesotan, Bob Dylan.

Lead singer, Dave Simonett’s connection to nature is combined in his music

In the runup to the in Denver (where Trampled By Turtles will create a booty-shaking ruckus on June 1), I interviewed Simonett for an episode of the ��ԹϺ�� Podcast, which you can listen to here. Here are some excerpts from our conversation that highlight Simonett’s decades-long love affair with Minnesota and its lasting influence on his music.

A MINNESOTAN SURPRISE

��ԹϺ��: If somebody stopped you on the street and said, “Hey, who are you? What do you like to do?” Would you say, outdoorsman? Would you say, conservationist? Would you say, hunter?

Simonett: Yeah, I’d probably start with those.

��ԹϺ��: Oh, before musician?

Simonett: Well, it depends on what point in life I guess I’d be asked. I think right now, at this point, even though music still takes up more of my time than anything else, my passions are split a little bit more equally nowadays. It’s more like a life’s work.

��ԹϺ��: You are an outdoorsy guy. You were a scout as a kid. You grew up in Minnesota, which though incredibly maligned like the rest of the Midwest, is double stuffed with frothing outdoor folks and adventures. What makes outdoor adventure in Minnesota unique and inspiring?

Simonett: Well, the natural beauty here is not as obvious. I like to say humble, but it’s not of its own volition. It’s just the way the land is. We have our prairies and our hardwood forest in the southern part of the state, and then the northern parts are boreal and a lot of pine birch, kind of reminiscent of maybe what people would think of as Maine. What people think of here is lakes. And that’s something we have a lot of. The Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness is probably our crown jewel of a landscape that’s still left to be a wild place. It’s pretty far out and I’d put a sunrise there up against any sunrise anywhere.

DEAR BOUNDARY WATERS, DAVE LOVES YOU

��ԹϺ��: For folks who have not been exposed to the beauty of the Boundary Waters, give me your 30-second elevator pitch on it to those who might be like, “Ahhhh, Minnesota, c’mon!”

Simonett: Right? It sounds buggy.

��ԹϺ��: Well, the mosquito is the state bird of Minnesota.

Simonett: And you won’t find any more of them than in the Boundary Waters if you go at a certain time of year, ha! But the Boundary Waters is a little over a million acres of woods and mainly lakes, thousands of lakes interconnected by portages. It’s part of the Superior National Forest and it’s named the Boundary Waters because it’s on the boundary of Minnesota and Canada. When you get a couple lakes into that wilderness, you might as well be in 1849 or something. It gets pretty far out and you can go deep as you want.

When I was young, a little bit of an initiation in that place was to paddle out to the middle of a lake, dip your cup in the lake, and drink the cup of water. That’s just as an example of what a bastion of clean water it is. And so I do a lot of work now on that place. If I’m gonna spend my time involved in something, this is where I get the most meaning in these places. I’m gonna work on protecting that.

THE JOY OF COLDER THAN HELL WINTERS

Simonett: I like winter. Half the stuff I like to do outside is when it’s snowing.

��ԹϺ��: I love winter too. But winter in Minnesota is a different animal altogether.

Simonett: It’s a good time to write songs, ha!

��ԹϺ��: Exactly. You’ve said that Northern Minnesota winters have inspired your music. And I think, in regard to the Midwest’s unfair poo-pooed-ness, the bitter cold winters have a lot to do with that. What do you think is the most unappreciated part of Minnesota winters?

Simonett: It gets dark at 4:30 here and I crave my little writing studio and a guitar. And that’s when my psyche wants to do it the most. And I try to honor that. There’s lots I want to do outside in the winter too, but it’s kind of a time where you can give yourself the leniency to look inside and try to make something. That’s what I’ve always used that time for. And that is the thing I look forward to, writing

Dave Simonett, lead singer, with his Trampled By Turtles band members

��ԹϺ��: Do you think that because of that, you are writing slower laments or are you writing dancier, more uptempo tunes?

Simonett: Like trying to overcorrect?

��ԹϺ��: Yeah.

Simonett: It’s hard to say, but I think that kind of stuff is more phase of life for me or reactions to creative whims. I think the weather in the wintertime will give me a space to do it. But I don’t know if that’s like, “Oh, I’m gonna write sad songs ’cause it’s cold outside.” That being said, look at reggae music and where that comes from. That’s a lot of happy stuff. Maybe I’m completely wrong about that. Hahaha!

DIRT-FOOTED HOOTENANNY VS. MELLOW INSTRUMENTAL

��ԹϺ��: I know that you don’t like labeling your music or boxing it into a specific genre, but I will say, Roots music, Bluegrass, Americana, Trampled By Turtles could fall under these if someone were to box you guys in. Ha!

Simonett: Haha! Yeah, if you wanted to limit us. Ha!

��ԹϺ��: Those genres very often present a frenetic dancey pace. They create a dirt-footed hootenanny. For instance, “Wait So Long” and “Codeine.” Those tunes of yours are incredibly aggressive. Where does that edge come from and does your time outside inspire it? Ease it? Do both?

Simonett: Both those songs are like 15 years old. When I was younger, I had a lot of punk rock left over. When I was a teenager, that’s what I was into. And I was a young man then. I had a lot of energy.

��ԹϺ��: Oh, so it was like angry young man music?

Simonett: Yeah, and you feel things real big and loud. I did anyway. It’s been a while since I’ve written a song like that. To be honest with you, I’m really trying, especially in music, but generally in life, as a husband, as a father, to grow older gracefully.

��ԹϺ��: Does that mean softer?

Simonett: I think it just means being true to where you are at the time. If I were to try to write a song like “Codeine” now, I would be lying. It would be me trying to reach for something that’s not there.

��ԹϺ��: On the other end of the tempo spectrum is a song like “Lutsen.” That’s nearly a10-minute beautiful, mellow instrumental. So where does that energy come from?

Simonett: That’s easier for me to point at. Lutsen is a little ski town in northern Minnesota on Lake Superior.

��ԹϺ��: Love Lutsen. It’s the first place I skied in Minnesota where I didn’t hear my turn. I love Lutsen.

Dave: Ha, yeah!. It’s as close as we get to real mountain skiing in the Midwest. I’d been spending a lot of time up there. It’s incredibly beautiful. I was doing some skiing, but also just hanging in the area by Lake Superior. It’s kind of our version of an ocean up there, with the same kind of gravitational pull on the people around it. It’s cold, it’s harsh. You go down to the lake and it’s like a nightmare sometimes. Like if you could turn a nightmare into water. So many ships have sunk in that nasty body of water. It reminds you real fast about where you are in the pecking order of things. And at the same time, you might wake up the next morning and it’s glass, and the sun’s coming up, it’s beautiful. That “Lutsen” song was that. That’s what I was trying to capture, comprehending where I was.

MY VELCRO IS YOUR VELCRO

��ԹϺ��: In regard to your time outside, your conservation efforts, and your love of Minnesota, if you were to take one of those things away, could you still write and perform the way that you do?

Dave: It sounds kind of self-important or something, but to me those are just little different parts of who I am. We’re all a product of space and time, right? I’m a product of where I live, what’s going on with me at this moment. And so you’d have to put me in somewhere real hard to escape for me not to find my space outdoors. I mean, I sometimes use touring to find new places to hunt and fish, which has been great. Last year and last summer, we went out to Montana. And both of those times I ended up on some really great fly fishing days with some buddies out there. When I’m home, I wouldn’t pop out to Montana and go fly fishing.

��ԹϺ��: The greatest work boondoggle of all time, ha! The music is whatever, but really what I’m trying to do is land a giant rainbow.

Dave: Haha! Yeah! I think for me, I really just hope an audience feels like we did the best we could. I hope they thought that their time was well spent.

I can write a hundred songs in this room and never play ’em for anybody. They’d still be songs and they’d still be mine. But there’s an interesting relationship that happens when you open that up to the world and I try to remain mystified by that. It’s scary and beautiful. I do enjoy that part of it. I don’t know if it’s like a “if a tree falls in the forest” kind of a thing, where it’s, “Can a song exist if nobody hears it?” I don’t know.

��ԹϺ��: I feel like there needs to be a bumper sticker that reads, “Peak Minnesota: Juicy Lucy, Tater Tot Hotdish, Trampled By Turtles,” not necessarily in that order.

Dave: It’s a lot of responsibility, but we’ll take it.

You could win a trip to the ��ԹϺ�� Festival and meet Trampled By Turtles backstage!

Donate to Save the Boundary Waters at and you’ll be entered to win round-trip travel, 3-night hotel stay, VIP passes to ��ԹϺ�� Festival, a signed Deering banjo, and even a Colorado adventure picked by the band. Enjoy VIP perks like private lounges, bars, and shaded seating while catching sets from Trampled By Turtles, Lord Huron, Khruangbin, and more.

NO PURCHASE OR DONATION IS NECESSARY TO ENTER TO WIN. A PURCHASE OR DONATION WILL NOT IMPROVE YOUR CHANCES OF WINNING. VOID WHERE PROHIBITED. TO ENTER WITHOUT DONATING CLICK .

See the ��Ի�� for more details.

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How to Hear the Minnesota Wilderness in a Guitar Chord, With Dave Simonett

mabrams — Tue, 29 Apr 2025 14:00:59 +0000

Minnesota is not always top of mind when it comes to outdoor adventure, but it should be. Just ask lifelong “Land of 10,000 Lakes” local Dave Simonett, lead singer of Trampled By Turtles. Dave grew up in Mankato and spent his youth exploring its rolling woods. And when he formed Trampled in Duluth in 2003, something surprising happened. His love of fishing, hiking, skiing, and hunting combined with his musical influences to create a songwriting career based on a deep connection to the outdoors. And today, when Dave isn’t headlining hootenannys like The ��ԹϺ�� Festival, he works diligently to protect beloved Minnesotan locales, like the Boundary Waters. Turns out, Minnesota’s woods and water are as integral to Dave’s life and music as a guitar pick.

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What Everyone Can Learn From Mount Everest, With Ben Ayers

mabrams — Wed, 23 Apr 2025 14:00:27 +0000

Ben Ayers has devoted his life to the Himalaya. If that conjures images in your mind of stone-faced mountaineers risking life and limb in pursuit of glory on the world’s highest peaks, you’ve got the wrong guy. Ben knows those guys and gals, but his experiences in these mountains are decidedly more down to Earth. In fact, despite living half the year in Kathmandu for decades, he’s never even tried to climb the world’s most famous peak. And it’s the ideas and insights he’s gathered exploring the region’s lesser known (and safer) mountains, while paying careful attention Everest’s impact on his adopted community, that make Ben such an interesting guy to talk to—that, and the fact that he’ll be reporting for ��ԹϺ�� from Everest Base Camp throughout what promises to be one of the most eventful climbing seasons in recent memory.

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If You’re Going Fast, You’re Doing It Wrong, With Ellen Bradley

mabrams — Wed, 16 Apr 2025 14:00:32 +0000

We all do it, zip as fast as we can around our favorite trails and rides. Maybe it’s because we feel a pull to get to the next thing, want to rush through the hard part to get to the fun part, or only have a brief window in our overbooked day. Whatever the reason, moving fast often results in missing out on the moment. But what would our time outside feel like if we adopted a slow, measured movement? Skier and scientist Ellen Bradly loves answering this question. Inspired by research in the Hoh Rain Forest on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, Ellen adopted a mentality for her adventures that prioritizes a deep attention to the details of her surroundings. And what started as a way to appreciate the beauty around her evolved into an ability to learn and hear things that her Indigenous ancestors were trying to teach her. Sometimes, the best way home isn’t necessarily the fastest one.

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Calling All Outdoor Startups. We Want to Get Your Big Idea Funded

Jessica McGee — Thu, 10 Apr 2025 16:48:05 +0000

This summer’s ��ԹϺ�� Summit and Festival includes a new pitch competition for outdoor industry and active lifestyle startups called , providing support for the next generation of bright ideas.

Mel Strong, a founding partner of , an early-stage venture capital firm, was a moderator at the inaugural ��ԹϺ�� Summit last year when she met an entrepreneur with a bold idea. His name was Matt Oesterle, and he was the CEO of a camping startup called Ramble, which aims to build full-service campgrounds in wild, natural settings, in contrast to the cramped, parking-lot-style RV parks that are now ubiquitous.

The two got to chatting and by the Summit’s end, Strong, who owns a campervan, was convinced Ramble had the potential to become the next big thing. So, she joined the board and added the startup to her firm’s investment portfolio. With that, the interaction between the two at an event designed to bring people in the outdoor industry together helped secure an investment in an up-and-coming business. Ramble now has two campground locations in Colorado, with more on the way.

��ԹϺ�� Summit attendees from 2024 hear from speakers on key topics surrounding the outdoor industry

All great outdoor brands start as a seed of an idea. An entrepreneurial spirit sees a problem or gap in the market and is willing to take a risk on a creative, out-of-the-box solution. But a startup can’t get going on its own. It needs support and funding. It needs a crowd willing to believe in the idea. That’s the concept behind ��ԹϺ�� Ignite, a new startup pitch competition debuting at the ��ԹϺ�� Summit this May in Denver, Colorado.

“For founders, it’s like hijacking the system,” Strong says. “Getting into a room of investors is really hard. But at ��ԹϺ�� Ignite, you’ll have this diverse group of people ready and willing to solve big problems who are all united by a deep personal passion for the outdoors. We will all be rallying around this idea that we want to progress the outdoor industry, collectively.”

It’s all part of the 2025 ��ԹϺ�� Festival and Summit, which combines the outdoor industry’s premiere networking and thought leadership event in the Summit with the fun-for-everyone ��ԹϺ�� Festival, bringing outdoor films, major musical acts, and conversations with athletes and thought leaders to Denver’s Civic Center Park from May 29 through June 1.

To kick off day one of the Summit, ��ԹϺ�� Ignite will bring together innovative founders from up to five startups with investors, VC partners, and other business leaders who can help take these early brands from seed to launch. The first place winner of the contest will receive a $100,000 valued prize and unique marketing opportunities. Awards will also be given out to a runner up and a People’s Choice Award, determined by a public vote.

The five startup founders who will pitch their ideas at ��ԹϺ�� Ignite will be chosen from a rigorous selection process after an open call for applications that began in March. Finalists from that selection process will be announced in April for the chance to present their ideas in person at ��ԹϺ�� Ignite on May 29. Those five finalists will receive support and pitch preparation help from, which offers full-scale assistance for rising entrepreneurs. Those finalists will then take to the stage in the recently revamped Denver Public Library for a chance to pitch their ideas to an esteemed panel of judges. The finalists and attendees will be led through the day’s events by emcee, entrepreneur, and former NFL linebacker Dhani Jones.

Judges for ��ԹϺ�� Ignite have been curated from from every facet of what it takes to create a successful business, from branding and law to leadership and finance. The judges include Next Ventures’ Mel Strong, who will return to the Summit in a new role; Ariana Ferwerda, cofounder and CEO of apparel company Halfdays; Laura Medina, partner with global law firm Cooley LLP, who represents emerging growth companies; and additional judges who have yet to be announced.

“While only one company takes home the first prize, every participant in a pitch competition gains something valuable—potential customers, word-of-mouth exposure, and meaningful connections in the venture and investment space that can open doors to future opportunities,” says Ferwerda from Halfdays. “Networking is crucial in the early stages of a business, and the more you put your company and pitch in front of the right people, the greater your chances of success.”

So, what will it take to win? Judges say they’ll be looking for a promising startup that showcases industry innovation, market opportunity, financial viability, business feasibility, and a compelling pitch. They’ll be seeking big ideas and emerging possibilities in everything from AI and sustainable gear to the future of media and climate solutions, with concepts across travel, wellness, gear, and adventure tech.

“To exist in the outdoor industry, you have to be a different kind of thinker,” adds Strong. “I’m excited to meet those kinds of thinkers.”

Those looking to attend the ��ԹϺ�� Ignite event will need to purchase a badge for the .

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Snowboarding, Surfing, and How to Make Your Dad Cry with Selema Masekela

mabrams — Wed, 09 Apr 2025 14:00:01 +0000

Culture is a term that different outdoor communities like to discuss often, but what is culture exactly and how do we make sense of it—how do we define it? To really understand it, you need a person who can wax poetic, you need someone who has dedicated their life to communicating the ineffable to the masses…you know, someone who has held a mic in front of a camera at the world class skiing, snowboarding, and surfing events for decades and who has lived in the gooey buzzing center of our culture since the 1990s. You need a legendary talker like X Games Chief of Sports and Culture, Selema Masekela.

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Need to Unburden Yourself of Secrets? Take a River Trip—Just Ask Mikah Meyer

mabrams — Wed, 02 Apr 2025 13:00:11 +0000

Mikah Meyer is a persistently-filled-with-joy endurance athlete and the first person to visit all 419 National Parks sites in one continuous three year road trip. But before he was making headlines, Mikah was just a kid growing up in Middle America with a secret he thought was a death sentence. When the stories we tell ourselves become our reality, and we drag shame through that reality like an anchor, life can seem too heavy to bear. So how did Mikah Meyer free himself from that burden to live life to the fullest? He went on a river trip with his friends and his mentor.

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The Sundance Film Festival Is Moving to Boulder, Colorado in 2027

Fred Dreier — Thu, 27 Mar 2025 19:47:13 +0000

The Sundance Film Festival is bidding adieu to Park City, Utah, its home for the last 40 years. On Thursday, the festival will relocate to Boulder, Colorado in 2027, and continue there for the foreseeable future.

“Boulder offers small-town charm with an engaged community, distinctive natural beauty, and a vibrant arts scene, making it the ideal location for the festival to grow,” the Sundance Institute announced in a press release.

The announcement ends more than a year of speculation about the festival’s new home. In April, 2024, the Sundance Institute announced it was looking for a new host city for the festival. The festival’s 13-year contract with Park City is up at the end of 2026, and the that it was looking for a bigger community as a host. The announcement marked a turning point in the festival’s history.

Originally called the U.S. Film Festival, it was launched in August, 1978 in Salt Lake City, and then moved to Park City in 1981. In 1985 the Sundance Institute—the independent film group founded by actor Robert Redford—took over creative control and officially renamed it Sundance Film Festival in 1991. The name was in reference to Redford’s iconic character in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

Over the years, the festival became a launchpad for independent films and directors. In 1989, Steven Soderbergh debuted his pivotal film Sex, Lies, and Videotape at the festival. In subsequent years, a host of independent films made their debuts at Sundance: Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, The Blair Witch Project, American Psycho, The Virgin Suicides, ��Ի��Dogtown and Z-Boys, among others.

Outdoor films have also featured prominently at the festival. In 2013 the climbing film The Summit debuted at the festival, and in 2015 the Jimmy Chin documentary Meru won the festival’s Audience Award.

Boulder is already home to its own film festival, the Boulder International Film Festival, which debuted in 2005.

Ebs Burnough, the board chair of the Sundance Institute, said that Boulder was among three cities to submitted proposals to take over hosting duties of the festival. The other cities were Cincinnati, Ohio, and Salt Lake City, Utah.

“This decision was informed by a detailed evaluation of the key components essential to creating our festival,” Burnough said in a statement. “During the process, it became clear that Boulder is the ideal location in which to build our festival’s future, marking a key strategic step in its natural evolution.”

Amanda Kelso, the acting chief executive for Sundance, told the Associated Press that Boulder has the right blend of space and energy for the festival to grow.

“Boulder is a tech town, it’s a college town, it’s an arts town, and it’s a mountain town,” she said. “At 100,000 people, a larger town than Park City, it gives us the space to expand.”

In statement, Redford thanked Park City for hosting the festival for four decades, and praised the move as a crucial one for Sundance’s future success.

“This move will ensure that the Festival continues its work of risk taking, supporting innovative storytellers, fostering independence, and entertaining and enlightening audiences. I am grateful to the Boulder community for its support, and I look forward to seeing what the future holds for the festival there.”

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Forrest Fenn’s Treasure Is Hidden Again. The Clues Are in a Netflix Documentary.

Fred Dreier — Thu, 27 Mar 2025 16:24:10 +0000

The Forrest Fenn treasure hunt is back on, and if you want to find the loot, you’re going to have to binge-watch Netflix.

That’s the big takeaway from Netflix’s three-part docuseries Gold & Greed: The Hunt for Fenn’s Treasure, which went live on Thursday, March 27. The series chronicles the decade-long hunt to find the chest that Fenn buried in the western United States—and the lives of the people who became swept up in the frenzy to find it. Over the three 50-minute episodes, the series dives into the good, the bad, and the ugly moments of the Fenn hunt, including the that occurred during it.

(Spoilers ahead)��But the series’ headline-grabbing moment comes in Gold & Greed’s final few minutes. One of the treasure hunters profiled in the series, a software engineer named Justin Posey, reveals that he purchased some of the 476 items from the Fenn treasure after it went up for auction in 2022. And now, he’s put the goodies—along with additional gold, rubies, and even a meteorite—in a chest and buried it somewhere out there. To find the trove, you must decipher clues that are hidden in the three-part series.

“I managed to sneak in some hints during the filming of this series—no one knows what the hints are besides me, not even the producers,” Posey says in the series’ final scene. “So it’s worth your time to watch and listen closely.”

To be honest, the revelation helps explain some of Posey’s curious quirks throughout the docuseries. He drives a truck that’s wrapped in a topographic map, he sits for interviews in front of computer screens showing mountains, creeks, and lakes, and he lives in a house filled with strange artifacts from his own collection.

“Most of my family and friends would categorize me as eccentric,” Posey says in episode one.

Justin Posey has hidden part of Fenn’s treasure again (Photo: Courtesy of Netflix)

So yeah, anyone who wants to find Fenn’s—er Posey’s—treasure is going to have to watch Gold & Greed again and again, until they have committed the entire program to memory.

I suppose that’s one way to market a documentary film.

��Gold & Greed Worth Watching?

You bet. Aside from serving as a launchpad for Posey’s new treasure hunt, Gold & Greed does an adequate job of capturing the fervor (or, dare I say, psychosis) that prompted thousands of people to tromp into the wilderness searching for Fenn’s riches. ��ԹϺ�� covered the Fenn treasure hunt between 2015 and 2023 with a series of longform features, news stories, analytical stories, and podcast episodes. But for anyone who isn’t familiar with the ordeal, Gold & Greed serves as an ideal explainer.

The opening episode devotes substantial time to profiling Fenn, the retired pilot and art dealer from Santa Fe, New Mexico, and to understanding why he launched the hunt back in 2010.

Fenn, who died in 2020 at age 90, famously kicked off the hunt with a poem he included in his memoir, titled Thrill of the Chase. The poem included extremely vague 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) about the location of the treasure, and these confusing directions were open to extreme interpretation.

Cynthia Meachum and Forrest Fenn became close friends (Photo: Courtesy of Netflix)

Gold & Greed strongest contribution to the trove of Forrest Fenn coverage is showing how people become convinced that their interpretation of the poem is the right one.

One group, a family of self-proclaimed Wyoming rednecks named the Hurst family, believes that clues describe topography in the backwoods near their trailer. Over the course of a decade, the Hursts embark on one Sisyphean mission after another, and at one point spend two years attempting to excavate a massive boulder because they think the treasure chest is underneath it.

Another hunter, a California airline pilot named Lou Boyer, goes on one extreme Internet deep-dive after another until he’s convinced that the treasure is buried on a swath of private property along the Colorado-New Mexico border. Boyer takes his family on various vacations to the area, but is repeatedly thwarted by closed gates, flat tires, and other calamities.

Cynthia Meachum, a retiree, believes the key to finding the treasure is building a personal relationship with Fenn himself, and over the years she soaks up clues from Fenn that convince her it’s buried in Yellowstone National Park.

And then there’s Posey, who approaches the hunt with an analytical fanaticism that is equally impressive and concerning. He builds his own facial recognition software to analyze Fenn’s television interviews, hoping to decipher clues from the 85-year-old man’s mannerisms. He also trains his dog to sniff out buried gold and bronze.

Like Meachum, Posey becomes convinced that the treasure is somewhere in Yellowstone, and during one trip he searches the exact area where the box was eventually discovered in 2020 by a medical student named Jack Steuf.

As I watched Gold & Greed, I often thought about my teenaged fascination with playing Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon while watching The Wizard of Oz and watching the music create a perfect soundtrack for the film. It took me years to realize that this dynamic was simply caused by my brain instinctively making connections between the film and the album. Well, that and the pot smoke.

This psychological quirk, likely the remnant of some evolutionary trait, adds fuel to the hunters searching for Fenn’s treasure. They see patterns everywhere, and don’t require a bong rip to drop what they’re doing and hike off into the woods. But there are also very human dynamics propelling them. Posey’s brother, who also hunts the treasure, dies by suicide, and the tragedy convinces Posey that he must locate it. The Hurst family seeks the gold as a way to escape poverty and provide a better life for their disabled sister.

And all of the groups admit that the spirit of outdoor adventure is also driving them to walk into the backcountry searching for gold. Despite the rather unseemly elements of the Fenn hunt—more than a few weirdos stalked Fenn and his family, and one even broke into his house—Gold & Greed argues that this spirit of outdoor exploration made the ordeal worth it. Whether or not you believe this conclusion is entirely up to you.

What Gold & Greed’s Director Has to Say

I recently had the pleasure of interviewing Gold & Greed’s director and executive producer, Jared McGilliard, who gave me the backstory on how the film came together.

OUTSIDE: Did you have any misgivings about having the documentary also serve as the launchpad for Justin Posey’s new treasure hunt?

McGilliard: Justin announcing that he’s hid a treasure in this series might be the first page of his new treasure hunt, but in my mind, it’s also the final page of his story searching for Forrest Fenn’s treasure. My focus was telling Justin’s story intimately and truthfully from beginning to end. To not include his new treasure hunt at the end of this series would have been not fully embracing the true arc of his story…and the impact Forrest and his treasure had on Justin’s life.

You chose four different groups of Fenn hunters to profile. What led you to each one?

The common ingredient was that they were all deeply obsessed. They had searched for years, and they all had highs and lows within their experiences. With all of them, they had this first chapter where they go out there, and over time they get deeper into it, and the hunt takes on more meaning—I’m going to solve the poem. I didn’t want to tell surface-level stories, I wanted to find stories where there were stakes and high ranges of emotion. Tragedy, beauty, adventure. I was also looking for a broad range of socioeconomic points of view, so I could show what finding the treasure really meant to them. And finally I wanted people with different strategies. Since this is Netflix it has to be a fun ride. You want the audience to grasp onto different subjects and root for them.

A new treasure chest is buried out there, ready for you to find it (Photo: Courtesy of Netflix)

What did you learn about the human condition from following these groups?

One thing that’s top of mind is that we all create our different versions of truth, and that trumps everything else. People had these ideas about the poem that oh, this can’t be just a coincidence, even though the poem is so vague that it could literally fit anywhere. I could walk out of my own backdoor and find connections in the woods behind my house. The wonderful thing is that people made these amazing memories, but letting go of the thing was nearly impossible.

I have to imagine that other filmmakers were chasing this project. How did you get it?

I would say relationships helped me. I spent a year creating deep relationships with these subjects. So, when the Fenn family got in touch with us, and I flew to Santa Fe, they wanted to know what about the story was important to me, and I could tell them. I can tell a story that is not disposable, and one that the general audience will understand. I have that level of trust and depth with the subjects, and I can handle the story with care. I know that when were pitching our film there were other companies pitching it too. But we had invested in these subjects.

What do you hope the audience learns from the film?

We often just think about the outcome: whether it’s a win or a loss. I got the treasure or I didn’t. But these people have so many wins and losses throughout their journey, and it brings them together. The Hurst family alone—the wife almost leaves the family because of this. They mortgage their house, and when they get to the end and don’t find the treasure, they say it saved their lives because it gave them purpose. Cynthia Meechum has no regrets. Each one of these people went out there, and none of them came back holding a box of treasure, but their lives were changed for the better. When I think about why Forrest did this, it was so people would dream and have adventures and find a new side of themselves.

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What Snowboarding Has to do With Parenthood, Loss, and Cancer With Kimmy Fasani

mabrams — Wed, 26 Mar 2025 13:00:37 +0000

Mostly, professional athletes are…kind of boring. Not because they’re fundamentally uninteresting. Rather, they’re too polished and are trained to spout canned and cliched nothing burger answers. But not professional snowboarder Kimmy Fasani. Kimmy has a remarkable way of distilling her snowboarding adventures into lessons she uses to navigate challenges in life we all face, like becoming a parent and dealing with loss, And she even manages to draw from her experiences in the mountains to grapple with things we hopefully never face, like Stage 3 cancer. Have you ever yearned to hear a pro athlete say something that’ll be useful in your own life? Just press play.

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Best Outdoor Books and Films for Adventurous People - �����ԹϺ��� Online