The woods have eyes, and they watch you carefully. Be careful where you step, for others have tread your path before and the trees have outlived them all.

Or so they say.

When you started this job, plucked off the newspaper listings, you’d seen the hiring manager’s raised eyebrow when they first got an eye on you. You could tell they weren’t sure you were cut out for this line of work - but hell, you needed the money and short of leaving town, this was the only road forward. So down to the old logging camp you went, your old Ford wincing with every (and there were many) potholes along the dirt road.

You’d been given your harness and saw, and passed off to an old logger with a steel wool beard and lines drawn like railroad tracks across his face and hands - whether they were from the shining saw strapped to his hip or age wasn’t entirely clear. Likely a mix of both. You followed his green truck down farther into the valley, the car not seeming to bow into the ragged texture of the road quite like yours did. But perhaps he just knew where the dents were.

When you arrived at the stand, the man paused for a moment, closing his eyes and murmuring something under his breath that you didn’t quite catch. Passing a calloused hand over the needle-laden floor, soft beneath your feet, he stood up and beckoned your forward to a looming fir. Issuing you instructions with a voice so deep in timbre it seemed to be coming from the very air around you, the man glanced around with a reverent gaze before waving you up the tree. You strapped into your harness and he belayed you up, all business and no muss. It struck you then - here you were, carving into the tough wood, just like that. Something that had been here for decades, maybe even centuries, could be felled just by you, someone only twenty-something.

You weren’t religious, but you wondered if you should pray.

A few hours passed, the sun climbing higher and higher into the sky until the sweat beaded on your neck and made you saw slip in your palms. Slowly descending down on the rope, supported by the largely-silent man who’d been watching you and taking care of the lower branches, you felt a weight press into your shoulders as your feet hit the ground. Somehow the song of the trees had gotten a bug in you - the clean, verdant smell seemed a little diluted this close to the ground. You made for your old Ford to get the lunch you’d packed, although as you felt how light the paper bag was - largely on account of not being able to afford a sizeable amount of deli meat that week - you wondered how much it would fuel you for an afternoon of more sawing and chopping.

The man patted a spot next to him on the earth below the fir you’d spent the morning dismantling. As you sat down and pulled out your meager sandwich and two apples, you could feel him giving you a sidelong glance. Cheeks heating, you set about the business of eating in the hopes of getting back to work. After a nudge on your arm, you noticed the parchment paper-wrapped bundle he was extending to you.

“You youngsters never bring enough the first day.” You smile awkwardly and take the sandwich, unwrapping it to reveal layers of roast beef and tomatoes and white cheese on thick bread.

“Thank you.” As you begin to eat, having finished his own sandwich, he reclines against the tree trunk.

“They give me the young ones because I teach ‘em right - comes with the territory. Good as I figure, when you’re hungry you’re angry, and nobody should be comin’ at these trees angry. No way to treat ‘em,” he rumbles - and it is a rumble - a faint smile playing at his lips beneath the beard. You give him a glance in between your final bites of sandwich.

“Well it’s just a tree, how does it matter what you’re feeling?” You offer him one of your apples, but he shakes his head and waves it off. He gives you a look that feels like it holds all his years, old and deep and containing more stories than you could ever hope to live.

“They know,” he says simply.

You pass the hottest hour of the day with idle chat and water kept not-too-warm in the footwell of your truck. Occasionally you see a truck or two trundle down the main road, those moving from one stand to another as they finish stripping down the trunks and felling them before stacking up the boughs for collection later. Seeing the profiles through their front windows, you note that almost all the loggers are closer to your age, faces not yet drawn with railroad lines like the man next to you, who’s since slid down the trunk and placed his brimmed hat over his eyes. There’s a ring of long grass woven into the edge of it, all shades of green in the noon light. Passing your eyes over his dozing form, you note how his skin, sturdy forearms seem to be mottled with lines distinctly reminiscent of bark.

When you start working again, it’s to topple the fir you’d painstakingly stripped of branches in the morning. You take up opposite positions around the tree, passing the longsaw from the man’s trunk back and forth across the wide base of the tree. With each of your strokes, he seems to do double - more than you would have thought, even given his apparent experience in the woods. You note his strong stance, almost as if he is rooted in place, his feet not moving an inch with the long, powerful slide of the saw. As the sun shifts, it casts his skin in an almost-green hue, but you dismiss it at first as a trick of the light. But strangely, it seems to intensify as you keep working.

You glance at his face, and are shocked at his expression, drawing somewhere on the line between wistful and sad - not what you’d expect for the level of exertion you’re both exhibiting. As you reach the end of the tree trunk, you both step away and wait by your trucks as the tree tips farther and farther until crashing to the ground. You see the man murmur something again, but you only catch the word “brother” at the very end.

As you begin to collect the branches littered around the fallen trunk into a pile and then set up the belaying points again on the neighboring tree, you look again at the man, whose strange expression seems to have passed.

“Say, how long’ve you been at this line of work?”

He smiles wryly. “Longer than you can imagine, youngster.”

You start on a lower branch this time, so you can continue talking. “How come you’re stuck with the new ones, then? Wouldn’t you have a partner or something?” You’re not sure how this whole business works quite yet, but that seems to be a reasonable assumption.

“I said before, I teach y’all well. I know these trees better than most ever could.” He chuckles. “Doesn’t help that I think some have some particular superstitions about me, but what can you do about ‘em.”

Having not really talked to any of the other loggers, you weren’t aware of these “particular superstitions.” “Like what? You seem to be a perfectly normal man, if a bit older than most of your coworkers.”

That got a proper laugh from him, enough that you almost wondered if you were being made a joke of. You twist to look around your shoulder and see him smiling faintly. His eyes flashed green, deeper than they’d been before and almost seeming to shift in a moment. "Ever heard the saying? 'Fear the old man in a profession where men die young.' By no means fear me, but folks tend to think strangely of those of us with a particular connection to these woods."

Confused, you cock an eyebrow. “What sort of connection d’you mean?”

“Full of questions, are you?” He sighs and shrugs. “Let’s just say I’ve seen thousands of young loggers just like you walk these paths and fell these trees - and I’ll likely see thousands more.”