What Wood Jesus Do?
Missing: The Carlson’s family’s heat for the winter
On Sunday, October 8, longtime Mammoth resident Laurey Carlson woke up, walked outside her Old Mammoth home on Woodman Street, and saw every wood stove owner’s worst nightmare—her six cords of seasoned lodgepole pine rounds were gone.
“I called 911,” said Carlson, laughing, early this week.
The wood was essentially stolen right out from under the Carlsons’ noses. Laurey’s husband was actually home at the time, when two cars pulled up and began loading up the couple’s 15-20” rounds of wood. Laurey was out for a hike in the Lakes Basin.
“Our house is pretty insulated, his office is not on the street side, and that’s where he was sitting, so he heard and saw nothing,” said Carlson.
She said her neighbors told her that three people, two men and a woman that were all described as Hispanic, pulled up in a “shiny” red pickup truck and a white SUV and made off with the wood.
Carlson said it probably happened around 3 p.m., and that it took them about 2-3 hours to load up the wood, which took the Carlsons about 8-10 trips into the forest to gather.
“I’ve been here a long time,” said Carlson, who manages employee housing at Mammoth Mountain and who served on Mammoth’s Ski Patrol for 23 years. “I’ve been getting my own firewood since 1981, and this has never happened before.”
For those who’ve never gathered their own firewood, the sting of the theft might be hard to fully appreciate.
“Today’s the first day I don’t feel like I’m completely insane,” she said on Tuesday, October 10.
