Searching for Beauty Video (and Hidden Treasure) in 4 Forests

Mushrooms, monarch butterflies, hidden treasure and ancient plants. From Vermont to Hawaii, you never know what you’ll find when you venture into some of the world’s most spectacular forests and jungles. Up for adventure? Let’s go.

Video Script:: 

[Music] in the heart of these magical forests and jungles are hidden treasures that await adventurous hikers get your maps ready and take the road less traveled these trails lead to surprise and mystery if you're thinking of a wild mushroom you're probably thinking of death and poisoning and vomiting but now that i'm a mushroom hunter i think wonder opportunity potential beauty every corner in the forest has a new surprise in the mycological world behind it my name is ari rocklin miller and i'm jenna antonino dimari and we are microphiles aka mushroom lovers in the united states alone there are at least 40 or 50 gourmet edible wild mushrooms and those run the gamut from the chanterelle with a powerful apricot aroma to the black trumpet with an earthy fig like flavor to the hen of the woods which looks like a hen roosting at the base of an oak tree in the fall there's an unbelievable diversity [Music] when i was a little kid i would just pile up every mushroom i could find in the woods around my house that was the beginning of the journey i do have dreams about wild mushrooms and then i sort of wake up and first thing i want to do the next morning is get out for mushrooms [Music] often i'm moving fast looking for brightly colored mushrooms other times i'm really getting down on my hands and knees crawling around the moss at the base of a beech tree looking for a black trumpet ari can become extremely enthusiastic about hunting for mushrooms and there have been times in the past where he'll be out for hours and hours and hours at a time but won't come back with anything finding them does take time but then every now and then all of a sudden you see one and that is the most powerful reverie unbelievable rush every time we use our knife and our mushroom brush and fill up our basket we don't over harvest mushrooms there isn't a monetary incentive we do want to leave some in the ground to spread their spores and to reproduce [Music] the hunt is intrinsically satisfying it's an epic treasure hunt it reconnects me to a childhood sense of wonder on a good day we can bring home many pounds of wild mushrooms [Music] when we bring our mushrooms back it's always such a joy to look through our find from the day and cook them up that evening [Music] [Applause] we don't resell the mushrooms that we find in the forest we instead enjoy them ourselves we pick just enough to share with our family and friends mushrooms have taught me that even in the tiniest things there's so much potential that there are whole worlds that we ignore that contain so much flavor beauty mystery wonder in 2010 this man forrest fenn hit a chest filled with gold and rare artifacts somewhere in the rocky mountains the search for this million-dollar treasure has obsessed thousands of seekers worldwide and the trail starts with this poem which fenn wrote it contains nine clues that point to the treasure's location it's here someplace where are we rolling as i have gone alone in there and with my treasures bowl i can keep my secret where and hen of rich is new and old [Music] fenn's motivation for hiding the treasure was to give hope to those knocked down by the recession and to inspire them to explore the wild i found a beautiful little romanesque treasure chest and i started filling it up with with gold coins and gold nuggets and about 280 rubies there are two salon sapphires there are eight emeralds a bunch of diamonds but mostly gold i don't know what it's worth and i don't even want to think about that you're not going to be disappointed if you find that treasure chest i'm cynthia meacham and i am a full-time treasure hunter i have been looking for fenn's treasure now for a little over three and a half years i head to treasure chest more than 8.25 miles north of santa fe in the rocky mountains someplace [Music] the poem that you have to solve forrest always said you have to find where warm waters halt and to me this is where our warm waters help that's where i think that we need to find the treasure chest [Music] the thrill of this chase for fenn's treasure has led many to leave the safety of known trails and well-beaten paths the mountains are very unforgiving [Music] it's extremely important that you know what you're doing and you know where you're going you can end up in big trouble really quickly there's even one hiker that's been lost looking for the treasure and he hasn't been found yet [Music] i was positive this was our warm waters halt and unfortunately i just i don't think that this is going to be the spot it doesn't matter what state you treasure hunt in you're going to have beautiful scenery like this and it doesn't matter if you find a treasure chest or not this is finding the treasure right here so hear me all and listen good your effort will be worth the coal if you are brave and in the wood i give you title to the gold the largest insect migration in the world ends each year in michoacan mexico millions of monarch butterflies travel from across the u.s and canada some flying close to three thousand miles to pass the cold months in the towering trees of this beautiful forest [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] when you come into lima huli you're going to see plants that you see nowhere else in the world all of this biodiversity was a foundation that hawaiian culture was built on i hear the voices of the old hawaiians talking about how special this place is and pushing me to really care for this place [Music] lima holy garden preserve is a 1 000 acre botanical garden in nature preserve situated on the north shore on the island of kauai in the hawaiian islands my job is to basically garner support for our protection of this place and the restoration of this valley [Music] some of the plants that we have now they're so rare that you have to go on a four mile hike deep into the valley or risk your life and climb one of those peaks to get to them [Music] one of the examples of that is this plant called olinaw which is the second strongest fiber in the world now that plant is pretty rare and they only exist way deep back in the wet valleys of the island within the context of the hawaiian culture every plant has a name when a plant goes extinct that's a part of our language it dies it's our job to make sure that they they stick around for future generation [Music] so this tree right here this is a really important tree culturally it's a hardwood it's the second hardest wood in the forest its name is uhuhi it's down to two trees left on the island of kauai so this is one tree that you're not gonna really find anywhere else 200 years ago all these plants were all around the community was actively cultivating them but there's been a huge disconnect in the past 200 years between the community and the resources of the valley this is actually the state flower unfortunately our state flower is down to just a handful of individuals in the wild so it's kind of a pretty strong statement of the state of affairs of our native plants i can feel the rare plants calling for help we talk about sustainability nowadays we don't have to reinvent the wheel the ancient hawaiians did it they were doing it for a millennium at least in hawaiian culture i always try to be at a point where you've given more than you've taken that resource management system is viable in the 21st century to address a lot of the problems we're dealing with nowadays [Music] if we're engaging with the ocean we don't just go down there and fish we build fish houses so that there's more habitat for the fish to live in and in the forest you go and take care of the place make sure that the plants are healthy before you gather and then before you leave you replant behind you so there's more for tomorrow you take responsibility for something and then you have a right to access it humanity doesn't have to be separated for nature and there are ways for humanity to engage nature such that both benefit this place can be a model it can be a model of how humanity is connected to nature and that is probably the most important story in hawaiian culture you