Wet Woods

Who Should Read This Book

The world of the forest products supply chain is often unseen, even by those whose livelihoods depend on it. From the outside it can look like a blur of log trucks on back roads or the distant whine of a saw in the hills. But look closer, and you find a world that ties weather, work, and markets into one relentless chain. To enter that world, whether by choice, profession, or curiosity, requires more than passing acquaintance. Wet Woods opens the gate and walks you into the yard, where the stories of those who measure with a Biltmore stick, pull with a skidder and cut with a saw are told in full.

The first circle of readers should be the service providers who stand just outside the landing but whose decisions shape it: Extension foresters and specialists, and staff from related agencies who translate policy into practice; loan officers who need to understand why a month of rain can upend a payment schedule; equipment dealers and insurance agents whose success depends on knowing the risks their clients face and NGOs who want to build bridges. For them, these chapters offer not abstractions but the ground-truth of what life in the woods entails.

The next circle is those entering the trade—the students in forestry programs, the young operators stepping into a cab for the first time, the early-career foresters and wood products people still learning their place in the supply chain. Wet Woods shows them not only how the work has changed, but also why it still matters. It is both a cautionary tale and a quiet encouragement: a record of what can be built even when conditions shift.

Oversight and regulation form another audience. Conservation officers, watershed foresters, land trust staff, climate warriors and state officials who monitor harvests or manage contracts will find here the consequences of their decisions, seen not in policy memos but in mud ruts, idle machines, and lost production days. Reading these stories gives them a lens to temper oversight with understanding.

Policy makers belong here too. We are decades past the lumberjack days and still most of them are unaware of this. Their decisions on taxation, energy, and land use ripple far beyond committee rooms. For legislators and administrators who want to help protect and perpetuate working forests, Wet Woods is a reminder that behind every acre enrolled or regulation passed are the people who must make it work on the ground.

General readers also have a place. Anyone curious about where hardwood boards begin their journey, anyone who wonders about the lives tied to the forests they hike or the firewood they burn, will find an honest account here.

About the Author

Steve Bick has spent a lifetime at the crossroads of forests, people, and ideas. His work is rooted in the Northeast, where he began as a forester on vast Adirondack tracts and went on to earn a doctorate in forest management and economics from Virginia Tech. From those early days on private timberlands to his later work guiding projects across the country, his career has been defined by a steady effort to connect practical woods work with sound economics and clear-eyed storytelling.

Through Northeast Forests, LLC, the consulting practice he founded in 1993, Bick has advised landowners, universities, businesses, and conservation groups. His projects have ranged from timber sales and appraisals to carbon accounting, conservation easement design, feasibility studies, project proposals, and valuations. In each, the common thread has been translating the complexities of the forest economy into decisions that people can act on.

Bick is also the founder and director of the Vermont Forest Business School, a lean and unconventional program created for mid-career forest entrepreneurs and those who support them. He has taught continuing education workshops throughout the northeast and beyond , lectured at universities and professional meeting across the country, and designed tools and training manuals used by foresters loggers, sawmillers, and Extension educators alike.

His books trace the contours of a career spent in both the woods and the classroom. Timber Tempo applies the logic of project flow to forestry. After Wood explores retirement and succession for those whose lives are tied to the forest. Earlier works such as Harvesting Woody Biomass and Forest Enterprises of the Adirondacks capture the ways small businesses navigate a changing market. On LoggingChance.com, he continues to publish practical guides, mobile apps, and reflections that bridge theory and practice for working lands professionals.  His Landowner’s Guide to Conservation Easements was the first book of its kind.

Wet Woods is both a continuation and a departure. It tells the story of a supply chain tested by weather, labor shortages, and shifting markets, but it does so through the voices of those living it. Bick has always believed that the best understanding comes from the ground up. Here, he turns the accumulated experience of loggers, foresters, and mill owners into a narrative that makes sense of change while honoring resilience.

Bick is an SAF Certified Forester and a Licensed Forester in the State of Vermont. His writing and teaching have been recognized with continual requests for more and even an occasional award or fellowship.  He lives in New York,  Vermont and Montana (it’s complicated), where his work continues to cross boundaries—between research and practice, policy and production, classroom and landing—always with the same intent: to bring clarity to a world that too often goes unseen.

Feel free to email Steve (steve@northeastforests.com).