Ben Allen, a skidder driver, washes down the last of his bacon and eggs with a cup of black coffee as he gets up from the table. He quickly wraps wax paper around his sandwiches, puts them in his steel lunch box and heads downstairs.
He steps into his steel-toed boots and grabs his hard hat off the hook. The rest of the household is still fast asleep. He walks down the dark, dusty road to meet his crew at the shop. Once he arrives, the crew drags a boat into the water. They pile in, start the motor and begin their trek across the lake to the logging block.
The moonlight glows off the ripples in the boat's wake. Even though it's summer, the breeze is cold without the sun's warmth. Allen cuts the motor and drifts into shore. The only sound is the boat crunching on the sand as the crew pulls it up on shore.
The commute to work isn't over yet.
They carry their hard hats, lunch boxes and a chainsaw that needed to be fixed last night up a wooded trail. "Being out in the woods is one of the best parts of the job," says Allen. "You also get to go into different sites all the time."
They walk for about five minutes until they get to a truck parked on a rough road. Again they start the motor and climb a rough, dusty road up to the logging block. Finally they arrive at the site.
Allen climbs a ladder and hoists himself into a large machine that pulls logs out of the woods -- it's called a skidder. He turns the key and waits for the engine to warm up. With a loud rumble and a spurt of diesel exhaust, the skidder creeps forward and up the hill towards where the fallers are beginning to saw down trees.
"We used to drive on skid trails, but it's not allowed now because of the new forestry practice code," says Allen. "We used to be able to have skid trails [roads for the skidder] wherever we wanted."
Now Allen carefully drives the skidder up the mountain, trying not to dig up the soil or cause damage. "We go everywhere now, and in some places it's a lot steeper and 10 times more dangerous than before," he says.
Logging industries across America have been trying to make their work better for the environment. For example, logging near creek beds is particularly damaging. "In lots of places, you're not even allowed to cross creeks, and in others you can't touch anything within 45 feet of the bank," says Allen.
Loggers are also shouldered with more responsibility in the woods in the effort to cause minimal damage to an area. "The new forestry code has made the job a lot harder for the logger, but it's way better for the environment."
Allen drives the skidder up a steep, rocky bank to get to the fallen trees and hauls the trees out of the woods to the landing using long, steel cords. Once at the landing, and after Allen has broken off branches, a bucker begins cutting the wood to length.
The block is a hive of activity. But by late afternoon, the crew is back in the work truck, dusty and tired -- another day's work is done. They'll be back at the site tomorrow and for a few more weeks until the logging is finished in the area. Then they will move to a new site.
A cleanup crew will move into this logging block and prepare it for reforestation. In a few years, forestry crews will arrive to plant seedlings. Tree planters usually come in with a crew and camp at the logging block. Each morning, they set out with a shovel and a bag of seedlings to work through the day planting trees.
Sarah Cooper worked as a tree planter for one grueling summer. "Sometimes we'd be on terrible land," she says, recalling working one afternoon after torrential rain. With each dig, Cooper's shovel banged into gnarled roots and rocks under the pools of water. "There just was nowhere to put in a tree," she says.
Her crew decided that if they planted well into the night, they could have all the trees in the ground and head out of this barren patch by the next day. Late in the evening the crew started to slow, the wind died down and the bugs started to come.
"I remember looking up at the person in front of me and their whole back was black," says Cooper. "We were literally going crazy up there. I started ripping up my trees into tiny shreds -- I just hated them."
At 10 p.m., one of the most stable members in Cooper's crew started screaming in the distance. The crew was spread out over two miles and couldn't locate him immediately. They thought he had been attacked by a bear. The people close by ran to help him, the others started running to the truck.
"It was horrible," says Cooper. "We were afraid he had been attacked by a bear, and that they would take him to the truck and leave us behind."
It turned out that the tree planter had been stuck in a marsh and was being eaten alive by black flies. Exhausted and filthy dirty, the tree planters piled into the van and left the site.
But all days aren't so grim for tree planters. On good days, a tree planter can put more than 1,000 trees into the soil. "You learn tricks to make the job easier," says Cooper.
However, after a summer, Cooper decided not to continue tree planting. Her decision wasn't based on the hard work, but rather on the fact that they lived in difficult conditions and could only leave camp once a week to wash. But there are many things she'll miss about tree planting. "It's great to be in the outdoors, and you form really strong friendships with your crew."
Cooper also adds that others can't get enough of the work. "Some people really fall in for this work. It's never boring, and it's honest hard work," she says. "And it's great to know you're doing something to help the environment."