In the early spring, when there was still snow on the ground, Rick was coming down from installing cabinets at a new small cabin up the Gunn Ranch Rd north of Winthrop. Someone had skidded off the road and was high-centered in the ditch, so he stopped to see if he could help. A couple in another car also stopped (the folks in the ditch wound up calling AAA). He got into a conversation with the couple in the other car, and found out they had just bought a place up the Chewuch and were out scouting where they could go to ski and snowshoe.
When this fellow found out Rick was a professional woodworker, he got all excited because he had some huge oak slabs at the family home in northern California that he needed to get up here and eventually have some furniture built from. He told Rick in a later email that:
“The family home was burned down during the devastating 2015 Valley Fire in Lake County CA. There were three incredible Valley oaks surrounding the house. We were told they were 300-400 years old. Two of them were slabbed and stickered in the Fall of 2015. The third was slabbed and stickered a few weeks ago (arborist wanted to confirm that it wasn’t going to make it). Slabs are 12-16 feet long, 3-5 feet wide and 4 inches thick.”
Family home with valley oak before the fire
One of the trees being slabbed
the truck arrives!
The next step was getting together with a local sawyer, who has the ability to re-saw and dimension the big slabs. They still need to dry longer, especially the one that was more recently slabbed, so it will be a while before this moves forward into a furniture-building project.
But it is such a great story so far – how a chance meeting led to such an interesting project. A real “twisp of fate”.
Twisp of Fate 
This sounds like it’s becoming a “when life gives you lemons ..” kind of a story – can’t wait to see how this turns out!
Great story! Looking forward to seeing what comes next.