Solitude

“I know it might sound funny saying this, but there’s an inner peace,” said Rick Alger about being in the woods of northern New Hampshire with just his horses Ruby and Emma.
Being alone can be time to reflect or to wrap one’s head around the self, but it can also be lonely. “I don’t always talk like this,” Rick said. “You know… going on like this.”
I proceeded to claim I had some sort of conjuring skills or CIA-like interrogation techniques that allowed me to get things out of him that didn’t normally come out of us New Englanders, but I was wrong. “It’s no skill of yours,” said Rick. “It’s just that I haven’t seen someone in so damn long!”
Rick is a horse logger just north of Berlin, NH. He’s collecting water for Ruby, Emma and himself just before heading back to camp for the night.
Rick and his two horses tread lightly on the forest floor. People hire him for this reason. While mechanical logging may drop more trees in a given time period, logging with horses leaves barely a sign of man’s footprint.
This type of logging isn’t making Rick a rich man, but if integrity was measured in dollars this guy would be the next Rockefeller.