WHACKED IN WALLA WALLA

A Crazy True Personal Story

WHACKED IN WALLA WALLA

Photo by Navi on Unsplash

Have fond memories as a child of a massive, majestic Sequoia tree ruling the countryside in California. So magnificent. Trees are…incredible. They proudly hold their branches up, praising God. Can you imagine life in a treeless world.

I’ve always loved trees. A little confession, some of my best friends have been trees. I’m pretty sure they listen to me.

As a kid, I built a two-story fort with several large fir trees as the foundational corners. I was really proud of this great accomplishment, until the day the whole thing collapsed, nearly killing me. I can’t blame it on the trees. It was my inferior construction techniques.

Years later I had the pleasure of building a rope swing for my three kids. It hung from a large branch of one of my favorite trees. I built a rickety stand where one could grab the rope and swing out high over our lake. The only problem was, if the swinger got frightened and didn’t drop properly into the water, they likely swung violently back into the tree. Our kids lost a few of their friends that way. Not the tree’s fault.

My most notable close tree encounter was when the Volkswagen bug I was driving had a head-on collision with a massive fir tree, sorrowfully depicted in my story, ‘My Near Death Experience’. I was the one that was inebriated, not the tree.

Though I love my tree friends, don’t call me a ‘tree hugger’. The little sticky pitch you get from hugging trees always irritates me. Now that I live in Arizona, I’ve learned not to hug the tree-like Sahuaro cactuses. They’re not nearly as friendly as Northwest trees; leaving hundreds of nasty sharp spines. After a few times hugging them, I came to the highly evolved decision that it was pointless. They didn’t want to be hugged. Not to mention, sleeping with dozens of little needles sticking in your body is a bit uncomfortable.

In the mid-nineties, while living in Snohomish, WA, I had a friend and sometime business partner, Randy, who happened to be a logger. Now don’t chastise me for having a logger as a friend. If you do a little research, you’ll find that there are actually more trees in this country now than there were a hundred years ago.

Randy was an interesting guy; he was a lot of fun and best of all, he loved our kids. He also wasn’t shy about expressing his opinions. He had some interesting insights into the Spotted Owl ruling, which drastically affected his industry.

At some point Randy and I decided to put our heads together to try to find a project that had timber but could also be developed into residential acreage lots. I had come to the extremely difficult and evolved conclusion that the cutting of trees was actually ok. I’m pretty sure a tree doesn’t experience that much pain when a chainsaw bites its teeth into it.

Here’s the thing: there’s money in them thar trees. So, making a little money from the trees and from the subdividing of the land seemed to make sense. A double profit so to speak. In my deepest analysis, I determined one could probably make at least double minimum wage in this kind of endeavor.

It wasn’t long before a possible project showed up at our doorsteps. Just a little beyond the scope of what I had in mind. It was a 10,000-acre parcel in Eastern Washington called the Rainwater Ranch near Walla Walla. The typical person lives on less than a ¼ acre lot. This was 10,000 acres. Get your head around that. Price? $4,000,000. Just a tad beyond our price range. There was that. But think big, right?

Not being swayed by a seemingly impossible opportunity, we decided to drive over and peruse it. It turned out to be beautiful country, complete with lovely meandering streams. We noticed that there were definitely trees on the property, so that was a positive.

Randy and I decided to plow forward; see what we could do. Randy sent a forester over to the property to do a preliminary assessment of the quantity, quality and species of timber that could be harvested. He started negotiating with a timber company that would be the ultimate buyer of the timber. He also started doing research on potential logging companies and worked on securing a timber harvest permit. It was going to be a bit tricky as, get this, the logs would need to be placed on rafts and floated down the Columbia River.

I got the easy part. Negotiate with the sellers for the best possible price and terms for the property and design a preliminary layout of lots. I must say it was pretty awesome the way it all started coming together.

I ended up negotiating a price of $3,500,000. Here’s a mindblower; after some serious negotiations, the timber company agreed that, as an advance against the timber, they would put up enough funding to cover the down payment of $2,000,000 as well as some of the start-up costs. This was exceptionally cool. Totally out-of-sight. We found that there was sufficient timber on the property to make it profitable. We hired loggers that were of sufficient scale to handle the job and at a reasonable cost. It was time for Randy and I to do a little jig, although, sorry, no video.

The property was zoned forty acres per parcel so there would be plenty of residential lots to sell. We laid out the road system so that the logging company would build the roads not only to access the timber areas but also for residential lots. This was amazing. We were in hog heaven (whatever that is). And then this...

A realtor friend approached us with a compelling proposal. He told us that we could flip the project to his client for close to a million dollars, net to us! We were told that he was an experienced timber guy. We hadn’t even closed on our deal, but we could put a million dollars in our pockets without any further work on the project ourselves. He would take over everything; manage the loggers, pay the seller ($100k per month) and deliver logs to the timber company.

We would likely make more if we did the project ourselves, but what the heck. That could take a number of years. The proverbial saying, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. Maybe. We weren’t so sure we wanted to go this route but for some reason we decided to.

We went to the attorney’s office in downtown Seattle to sign the papers. I’ll never forget the scene; there were stacks of documents on all available surfaces in the large conference room. We literally walked around this huge conference room to sign all the documents, probably around fifty. We had to sign corporately and personally. Julie didn’t have a good feeling about it but Randy and I, being the eternal optimists we were, didn’t pay her much attention, much to our ultimate regret.

But Randy and I were happy. With some of the funds the timber company was advancing and the first payment from our buyer, we walked away with around $300,000 in our pocket. And that was just the beginning. Now that we were in the big bucks, we celebrated big time by going to a high falutin restaurant in Seattle. And then this…

Two months later we get a call from the sellers of the ranch. The first payment from our buyer to the seller in the amount of $100 grand bounced. Seriously. Bounced. They were obviously concerned. This was not a happy call. Now ask yourself, who would write a check of that size and not have it covered?

Randy and I were starting to get a little concerned, because not only were we expecting a ton more money to come our way, but we were also still on the hook for the payments to the seller and commitments to the timber company and the logging company. Whoa!

And then the unraveling began. Serious unraveling. The nightmare started. We found that our buyer had already run out of money (he may have naively thought money from the sale of logs would have come in by then). The land sellers were threatening to sue. The timber company was threatening to sue. The logging company was threatening to sue. Suddenly we were in Sue City. Not a happy place to be.

Our buyer, Andy, may have been cooperative and let us take back the project, but his father (who was a wealthy and experienced logger) advised him against it for some undisclosed reason. In fact, every time we came up with a viable solution, his father gave it the thumbs down. Not sure why. He wasn’t our favorite character at the time.

This was becoming the mother of all nightmares. We were stuck. The high-priced legal advice we received was that the only thing we could do at this point was take the project into Chapter 11 bankruptcy. This wasn’t the solution we were hoping for, but seeing as we had no choice, that’s what we did. This at least gave us some breathing room to see what could be done.

The bankruptcy ultimately went on endlessly, for about twelve months with many court appearances and filings from our attorneys and the attorneys representing all the other parties. Our attorneys were sympathetic and nice, but extremely expensive. Maybe you would be able to maintain your cool, but the whole thing was extremely high stress for me. I think my blood pressure popped up to around 500.

Finally though, a bit of good news. A little light in the darkness. A new timber company came to the table and submitted an offer to the court. The offer would pay off the sellers and the other timber company, as well as settle the logging company liens. As there was really no other alternative, the offer was accepted by the court.

The bottom line for Randy and I? Nada. Nothing came to us out of the new purchase. Unfortunately. All but about fifty bucks of the original $300,000 was paid to our attorneys and for court costs. The good news was that the bankruptcy attorneys took Randy and I and our wives out for a fancy dinner. And honestly it was quite enjoyable. And we did still have the fifty bucks, so there’s that.

So why did this happen to me? What’s the moral of the story? I should have listened to the Holy Spirit. Surely I was being warned. I shouldn’t have done the flip. And of course I should have listened to my wife. She often knows didly about a given business situation, but she always seems to know whether it’s a ‘no’ or a ‘go’. Thinking retrospectively (which I’m super good at) we should have done the deal ourselves and not flipped it. That Julie would have gone along with. I apologized to the Lord and to my wife and have hopefully learned my lesson. It was a God-given opportunity that we squandered.

It would be totally rad if you would give me a ‘like’. Also I’m offering a free subscription to those unsubscribed. Thank you and next time you hug a tree, think of me.