Steven Bick

Wet
Woods

Flux, Flex & Change in Our Forestry

The real story of the changing climate in the Northeast is not found in century-long trends, but in the sharp, seasonal shocks that have torn the pages from the unwritten almanac that once governed life in the woods.

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About the Book

A world in flux — told by the people living it.

For decades, the loggers, foresters, and mill operators of the Northeast built their lives around a dependable calendar. You had four good months of frozen ground. Sometimes five. You could build on that. That world is gone.

Wet Woods is an exploration of the forest products supply chain in a region where the old expectations about weather, labor, and markets have become as infirm as a late October frost. Built from interviews with the men and women at every level of the industry — from veteran cutters to mill owners to conservation foresters — it is a story of adaptation, stubbornness, and measured hope in a trade that has always been hard.

Steve Bick has spent six decades in and around these woods. This is the story he was put here to tell.

You had four good months. Sometimes five. You could build on that.

Bruce Koenig  ·  North Lake, New York

Inside the Book

Nine chapters. Nine ways the woods have changed.

Pro Log
The Setup
Why this story, why now, and why from someone who has lived it for thirty-five years in the field.
Chapter 1
North Man
Bruce Koenig's early years at North Lake — where reliable winters meant four or five good months of frozen ground, every year, without fail.
Chapter 2
The Unraveling Almanac
January thaws that once came and went now strip the frost in days, leaving a grapple skidder parked in the mud. How the calendar stopped working.
Chapter 3
Flow in the Forest
The quiet, skilled interpretation that lets a logger read the ground, the sky, and the market all at once — knowing which ridge will hold and which hollow will sink a machine.
Chapter 4
Mind, Methods and Machines
From buying a mill with cash to million-dollar cut-to-length systems that demand ten and a half months of work just to keep ahead of the bank.
Chapter 5
The Cost of Doing Right
The weight of doing the job properly — pulling off a tract for a week to protect a saturated crossing with no one paying for the downtime.
Chapter 6
Conservation in Real Time
Protecting land and water while keeping wood moving — cost-share bridges, stone on skid trails, and the judgment to walk away when conditions turn.
Chapter 7
The Uneasy Link
The landowners — family, corporate, and institutional — whose decisions shape the work before it starts, from those who hand you the keys to those who rewrite the terms mid-cut.
Chapter 8
The Next Ones
The shrinking pool coming into the trade and the gap they are asked to fill — with some veterans saying it would need thirty percent more pay just to be worth it.
Chapter 9
Different Types of Optimism
Measured hope from loggers, foresters, and mill managers who have adapted to an environment that no longer follows the old rules — and still believe in the work.
J. Claude Lecours logging contractor, log loading
Logger chaining up a truck in winter
Inside a working sawmill
Log loader working in snow
Who It's For

For anyone who has worked in the woods — or wondered what that work really looks like.

Loggers, foresters & mill operators
You lived this story. Steve has done justice to it — the hard seasons, the calculus of every job, the pride of doing it right.
Land managers & conservation professionals
An on-the-ground view of how climate volatility plays out in the supply chain — told by people managing it in real time, not modeling it from a distance.
Policy & regulatory professionals
The human cost of the compliance burden — what it actually looks like to pull off a job for a week, unpaid, to protect a crossing — made concrete.
Readers of narrative nonfiction
The tradition of Kidder and McPhee — serious long-form work that brings a hidden, essential industry into full, vivid relief.
Wet Woods book cover
Get the Book

Available now.

In print, digital, and audio.

Print
Paperback
ISBN 979-8-89860-673-2. Ships from Amazon and major retailers.
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Digital
eBook
Available for Kindle and all major ebook platforms.
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Audio
Audiobook
Stream or download — narrated and available now.
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Bruce Koenig at Raymond Hills, New York
Chapter 1  ·  North Man
His deep literacy of the land came from years of looking, listening, fixing what breaks, and showing up again the next day — in a world where the seasons still meant something you could count on.

Bruce Koenig at Raymond Hills, New York

About the Author

Steve Bick

Steve Bick has spent more than three decades as a consulting forester in Vermont, working across every part of the forest products supply chain — from timber sales and harvest planning to mill operations and workforce development.

His connection to the woods began before his career did, in the slab piles of a family friend's sawmill in upstate New York. In recent years, the U.S. Forest Service asked him to lead a study of the Northeast's forest products supply chain and its vulnerability to climate change. Wet Woods is what that work became.

Steve is the principal of Northeast Forests LLC and Director of The Forest Business School. Much of his work is posted at LoggingChance.com.