Jason Skipper is happiest when he's outside. He grew up trekking through the region's woods - hunting, fishing, hiking. "I've always thought I was born a couple hundred years too late - I can really see myself as one of the first settlers here or as a Native American of that time living in the wilderness. I would have loved to have been around back when the forests went on forever and logs were cut with axes and crosscut saws and pulled out of the woods with horses." He says he can't imagine working inside at a desk or in a factory. "I like being outside. I like the fresh air - sun, rain, snow - whatever the weather, I want to be outside in the woods."

This Charlesville resident turned his love of the outdoors into a career as the log yard supervisor for Blue Triangle Hardwoods Lumber north of Everett. He prepared for his career by earning a two-year Associate's degree as a Forestry Technician from Penn State's Mont Alto campus - a degree that Jason said helped get his foot in the door at Blue Triangle.

Jason oversees the operations of the log yard and with a colleague bids on standing timber that the company cuts to feed its mill. Five log buyers in the region also purchase timber that's already down. Logs are tracked throughout the operation - coming into the log yard already graded and tagged with a computer coded tag that can be read by a handheld bar-code reader. "It's an efficient, sophisticated operation that relies on good organization and everyone knowing their job and doing it well," he says. "We all work to get the job done right." Even with that teamwork, Jason says problems crop-up from time to time. "The challenges are what makes it interesting," he says. "I like being a problem-solver and figuring out how to get things done. There's something new everyday, and that keeps us all on our toes."

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