Steve Weber: I Like to Work

Unlike many loggers, Steve Weber does not have a family history of logging or farming. The son of a doctor, Weber grew up in sparsely forested Brooklyn. But by the time he graduated from Dartmouth College in 1962 with a degree in botany, he had a world of summer experience—cutting pulp and firewood with a French Canadian crew in Maine, clearing trees in New Hampshire for fire prevention and safety, running a choker cable in Alaskan spruce forests. Weber has a master’s degree in forestry from Yale, worked for paper companies for nearly a decade, and was the college forester at Middlebury College for 31 years. He insists that he is a forester first and an amateur logger second. Logging professionals disagree: “He is one of us.” 

Detail photos from right to left: The crew: Rick Laporte, left, on dozer; center, Steve on chain saw; right, T.J. Turner on skidder; center, know your escape route, generally a 45-degree angle from the stump; left, the longer the skid, the less the profit. An hour was the turnaround time in the distant reaches of Weber’s wood lot.