FORESTER

• The Work: What you do depends on your boss. State and federal foresters monitor trees for disease, analyze soil and water quality, supervise loggers, and draft long-term conservation strategies for stands of giant redwoods. Consulting foresters help private owners of small tracts manage trees and wildlife. Timber company employees oversee harvested land, decide what gets the saw next, and coordinate replantings after clear-cutting.
• Time Outside: 50­75 percent.
• Payback: $27,000­$60,000 for government jobs; up to $80,000 for private sector.
• Prerequisites: Get a B.S. in forestry from SUNY in Syracuse (315-470-6600; www.esf.edu), or aim high with an advanced degree from The Yale School of Forestry (203-432-5100; www.yale.edu/forestry).State jobs require that you pass a standardized forestry exam.
• Networking: The Society of American Foresters (301-897-8720; www.sfnet.org) provides a database of needy employers for its more than 17,050 members.
• Peon to Pro: "With a B.S., you can get a job," says Larry Nance, of the Arkansas Department of Forestry. "But to know your job takes about three to four years." And promotion to district ranger requires ten to 15.
• Drudge Factor: Much of your time—more than half for seasoned foresters—can be spent squinting at computerized graphs instead of romping through the woods.
• Outlook: Like trees, the profession is slow-growing, but there's an increasing need for foresters within private firms and green groups that manage sustainable tracts.

SMOKEJUMPER

• The Work: A little known fact: Smokejumpers with the Bureau of Land Managementand the Forest Service don't just parachute into forests to fight fires, they parachute onto them—intentionally landing on lodgepole pines and lowering themselves down to battle raging blazes with only their Kevlar-reinforced jumpsuits for protection. In their downtime, they frequent the free-weight circuit and the sewing machine (tree branches wreak havoc on gauzy parachute canopies).
• Time Outside: 40­80 percent during the typical June­September fire season, depending on tinder conditions.
• Payback: Rookies for the feds pocket a base pay of $10.50 an hour—twice that when actually fighting a fire. Base commanders with 20-plus years of experience earn $60,000 a year.
• Prerequisites: The only way in is trial by fire—literally. Most rookies have six years of on-the-ground firefighting experience with hotshot crews. No jumping experience is needed, though; the BLM and Forest Service prefer to train from scratch.
• Networking: Check in with the National Smokejumpers Association (406-549-9938; www.smokejumpers.com).
• Peon to Pro: Ten years to foreman and a spot on the year-round crew.
• Drudge Factor: When it comes to risk, it's all or nothing: Land the wrong way and you could find yourself with a dead branch embedded in your butt—or worse, a broken back. During soggy summers, blaze-battlers build fences. Yawn.
• Outlook: Look before you leap. Each year, roughly 800 hopefuls apply for 30 BLM and Forest Service openings.

PROFILE
Backcountry Ranger's Ramble
This month, as rural Maine braces for its first big snow and winter climbers launch weekend expeditions into the backcountry, Stewart Guay is packing gear for a season in the woods. For five days a week from late December through early March, Baxter State Park's sole winter ranger works, eats, and sleeps in a four-room log cabin at Chimney Pond campground, halfway up the side of 5,271-foot Mount Katahdin (he goes home on weekends to his wife and two kids in nearby Millinocket). "I always have a song in my head!" he enthuses. "Somehow, I've managed to land a dream job."

It's vocational nirvana—that is, for anyone into seclusion, rigorous outdoor labor in frigid weather, and a less-than-luxe lifestyle. After besting five other candidates for the job in 1994, Guay, 27, has spent his winter workweeks hauling firewood, checking avalanche conditions, registering the half-dozen or so hikers who pass through, maintaining the bunkhouse, and ferrying injured climbers down the mountain by sled. And then there's his least-favorite task: clearing deep snow off the three-mile-long, 3,000-vertical-foot trail that links Chimney Pond with the road out of Baxter, a sweaty, two-week ordeal. "There's nothing like the beauty and solitude of this place," says Guay. "But I get really, really, really sick of shoveling snow."

He's not tired, however, of living among the moose and deer in a cabin minimally equipped with emergency cell phone, propane fridge and lanterns, running water sans flush toilet, transistor radio, range, and woodstove. Yet Guay knows that the day will arrive when he may trade the cabin for a year-round ranger job that lets him come home to his family every night. Even so, pondering such an ordinary life makes him wistful. "Sure, it'll be nice to see more of the wife and kids," he allows. "But I won't have the same kind of feeling I have up at Chimney Pond." —PAUL SCOTT