If you happened to be in a state park somewhere in America in the last few months and saw determined-looking people investigating the knot holes on trees, they probably weren't searching for signs of extraterrestrial life.
Nor were they botanists, Bigfoot enthusiasts or fervent believers in gnomes.
Instead, they likely were participants in a national hunt for a dozen tokens hidden by Michael Stadther, the author of the fantasy book "A Treasure's Trove." The book's story line contains clues that lead to real-life locations of the tokens, which are redeemable for very real-life jewels worth a collective $1 million.
The hunt began last fall and was expected to take as long as two years to complete, given the complexity of the clues. A map to one token, for example, was hidden within an illustration in the book. Hidden on the border of the illustration's facing page, Morse code spelled out the location.
Tricky stuff, but thanks to several well-organized online communities devoted to discussions of the book and solving its clues, the last of the original 12 tokens was found last week, says the moderator of one of the biggest hunt sites.
There's little question that the speed with which the tokens were found is due largely to the organization and cooperation that took place on sites like Tweleve and 12Gems.com.
"Without Tweleve I think this would've taken a lot longer," said Kristin Seiger, the 23-year-old Newton, N.J., woman who was one of two to find the so-called Grasshopper token inside a dogwood tree in upstate New York's James Baird State Park. The token can be traded for the grasshopper jewel, a $54,000 item made in a 19th century shop in Russia.
"It was a cooperative learning space--everyone shared ideas and tried to help out however they could," Seiger said. "No idea was never discounted or called stupid."
According to Chris Landauer, who moderates Tweleve, two men found the 12th token, known as The Beetle, in a tree in South Dakota's Badlands last weekend. And while Stadther and his company said they need a few days to vet the find before they will formally confirm it's the 12th token, Tweleve has posted pictures, both of the token itself and its hiding place in a tree.
"The Web community was like a massive intellectual computer with a heart."
--Chris Landauer, Tweleve moderator
After a successful career making banking software, Stadther decided it was time for a change several years ago. He was impressed by the British treasure hunt "Masquerade," and modeled "A Treasure's Trove" hunt on it. He put up his own money to pay for the jewels, most of which were handcrafted by master jeweler Robert Underhill. Stadther, in fact, found three of them on his travels around the world.
"A Treasure's Trove" revolves around a hero's search for a series of creatures, including a bumblebee, a grasshopper, an ant and others, who have been turned into small crystals by a fantasy book bad guy. The premise for the hunt that goes with the book is simple: Find a token, redeem it with Stadther for one of the jewels.
The combination of real life and fantasy has clicked. Stadther said he has sold about 600,000 copies of the book so far.
While Stadther put up a site for the book and the hunt and says he thought some people who use the Internet would discuss the search, he wasn't expecting the rush of people who began to coordinate their efforts on the various third-party online communities.
"I expected Internet activity, and I expected clue sharing," said Stadther. "If I had been a clue solver, I probably would have tried to find two or three more jewels before posting my solution."
But Stadther didn't realize his readers would so enjoy being a part of this ad hoc treasure hunt community.
"It almost seems like for the lookers and the finders, the trovers, it was...as much fun being in the finding community as it was trying to solve the clues," he said.
Fred Pacolitch, who found the Grasshopper token along with Seiger, agreed, saying it became common for people who had never even met
I think this story really gets to the heart of the issue, and I thought it was well written, thoughtful, insightful, and accurate. Nice quotations from sources, and excellent synthesis.
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