Lessons in Wood
It has been raining all summer in northern Maine, the 10th wettest summer on record, and this Wednesday in August dawns overcast, the low gray clouds plump and threatening to overspill at any moment. It’s humid on the ground, too. The morning dew point and the temperature are twinning, both in the mid-60s, saturating the air. It’s one of those days when a sensible person just wants to hunker down.
Not so with the half-dozen morning-shift students of the Mechanized Logging Operations and Forest Trucking (MLOFT) Program who’ve been on the job since 5:00 a.m., deep in the buggy woods of Summit Township, northeast of Old Town. They like the feel of weather, the changing elements, the turning of seasons – in fact, for some, that’s the whole point.
“I came here because I wanted to be outside,” says Dylan Hooper, who rises at 3:00 a.m. each day to make the two-hour drive from his parents’ home in Blue Hill to the open-air classroom. No matter the weather, he adds, “I just want to be in the woods.”
Published in Northern Woodlands on December 21, 2023
