Interpreting a Small Map

Here’s a quick interpretation of a treasure sign for you. I’m calling this an interpretation because I think that is what you do with treasure signs and symbols. In most cases there aren’t specific definitions for a symbol and you have to interpret their meaning.

This one is what I would call a boot. It is showing three drill holes in it and a “bird”. The third, larger drill hole is in the body of the bird and is hard to see in the photo because of the shadow. The entire rock is telling you that you have a triangle with two marked spots and a third “imaginary” or unmarked spot. To read this one properly you need to go in the direction the tip of the boot is pointing. The boot shaped rock is depicted by one of the drill holes. By traveling in the direction of the boot tip you will run into the second point, which in this case was another rock with a drill hole in it.

To find the third point you have to look back at the boot and how the bird’s beak is pointing. If you were to draw a line from the beak to the right, out past the top drill hole the line would intersect with another line made by taking a 90-degree turn off of the second point. Remember, the boot is point one and the point of the boot takes you to point two so from that line you make a 90 degree turn to the right which is the way the “bird” is pointing. By figuring the distances based on the drill holes in the rock and making your intersecting lines at the rock you can get a distance to the third point. This is done by turning the distance in inches between the two drill holes into distances in feet between the boot and the second point. Once you have done that you can apply the actual distances to the two lines you just drew (the line going 90 degrees from the second drill hole and the line from the beak to the intersection of the 90 degree line) and that will give you an exact distance to the third point.

I have circled the larger drill hole that is in the body of the bird. This larger drill hole is telling you that THE hole you are looking for is found using the bird. In this case, the third point was the location of what I was looking for. Take note that the two drill holes out by themselves form a line in a different direction than the boot points. This was done to confuse anyone who tried to work this marker other than the maker. In some instances, the direction you would go would be in line with the two drill holes. The third hole in the body of the bird can also make you think the triangle is worked differently and in some cases it might be but in this case you had to find the "imaginary" or unmarked point to locate the hole.

This was a simple coded marker that gave specific information on how to find the cache. I say simple because once I figured it out it seemed very simplistic although figuring it out wasn’t that simple at the time. This is another example of breaking a symbol down to its basic elements. Once that is done you are left with only a few choices of things to try.