I sit with my headphones on, the glow of my laptop lighting each page of the book. I committed to a third pass of Beyond The Maps Edge. This time felt different. I was armed—unburdened, rather—from the nitpicking of words and phrases, and finally able to focus on intention and the meaning of the story. Patterns, albeit broken, started to reveal themselves.
I had spent ten months interpreting the poem, the stories from the book, and deciding whether the theories of other Discord users were worth my attention. Even without holding any treasure, I felt embodied with the kind of proficiency you only get from doing something over and over again.
Up until this point, I had read the book twice from front to back. Notes are scribbled throughout it—markings of initial, impulsive thoughts that have long been disproven, but that serve as a permanent reminder of how much I’ve grown since I started. They say you learn just as much, if not more, from your failures as you do from your successes. I guess you could call these life lessons… even if they’re just scribbles, barely legible in the whitespace on each page.
Each failure has been accompanied by a long drive, a sore body, and almost always an epic story. I can see now why someone would offer a ticket to the Rockies for the low cost of $49.98, plus expenses. The scenery is absolutely breathtaking, the connection to nature is healing, and the clarity of mind is worth the trip alone. Not to mention the treasure. Oh, the treasure.
Okay—so back to why I’m making this post.
My last trip to the American West was amazing. I learned a ton about my target areas. It armed me with enough skepticism to rethink my approach.
My second BOTG was in August 2025. I was loaded with provisions to last a month, and I had a custom-built command center that let me fox hunt RF signals, auto-detect infrared in 360 degrees, collect IMSIs, and run other custom-built gadgets that may or may not have had the ability to trick GPS devices into giving up their position simply by being within range. One thing I was lacking was the knowledge I’ve gained over the last six months: experience and perspective. The shiny objects still glared and caught my attention—not yet old, but already stored away like a once-prized kid’s toy I’ve grown bored with.
This time, reading through the book, I’ve learned to pay attention to that quick nag while filtering out the very things I burned time on before. I can enjoy the stories for what they are. And when I hear that brief click as I read, I know it’s something that demands more attention—something higher-level now. Something new, but old.
Here’s an example.
The biggest thing for me in Posey’s On The Road is that Justin’s dad didn’t trust the speedometer—and the use of “Tactical Precision.” Justin was tasked with a “covert math lesson,” where he calculated the speed they were traveling.
These things stood out in my first two passes, and I’m sure they were seen by many others. The question is no longer about the clue, but why it was present. If this is a clue, why did Justin mention it? How did he craft it?
It’s simple: vehicles in the 80’s and early 90’s did not have gauges that went above 85 MPH. He was speeding and didn’t know how fast he was going.
What about the covert math lesson? I think this is pretty simple as well. Justin provides a speed that is clearly not just wrong, but way wrong. Was this a nod to check his math? Was this something I really looked over?
Using the reverse formula to get the speed, you find that the seconds counted by Justin come out to 53.49 seconds. This infers that he was using a digital chronometer (possibly just a digital watch), with the errors coming from the start and stop of the timer—because of how fast they were driving.
…
Maybe you came to this conclusion before your third read-through of the book. But maybe you didn’t—and that’s exactly what I’m trying to convey.
While you may not need brown noise or even white noise to slow yourself down, there are new possibilities in the book that we haven’t picked up on simply because we’re letting the shiny things steal our attention from the bigger picture. It’s only when you become intimate—and bored—with the same old things that you can truly see what you’ve been seeing, but haven’t yet recognized.
This theme plays out in many places throughout the book. If you haven’t read through it recently, do it again. This time, don’t try to search for clues—let them nudge you. Something may just pop out when you least expect it.
Leave a Reply