Fifty years outside.
If you find something you really love to do, make it last a lifetime. William Sargent, from the introduction
Out now
50 Years A Dirt Forester
A life-long Vermonter takes readers from a two room schoolhouse in Worcester to the floor of the State House, through a series of adventures and, as he calls a few of them, misadventures.
It began with a bill. In the spring of 2024 anti-hunting advocates pushed legislation that would have changed hunting in Vermont forever. Sargent wrote his testimony, signed it as fifty years a dirt forester, and a colleague told him the rest of it belonged in a book.
- Publisher
- Northshire Press
- Published
- 2025
- Pages
- 133
- Format
- Paperback
1974
Out of the classroom, into the mill
A B.S. in Forest Management from the University of Vermont, a minor in Wildlife Management, and a job as forester for a small sawmill in Stamford. He started the day after graduation.
1975
Lumber towns, and the years between
Nearly three decades with lumber companies across Vermont, New York and Massachusetts, then a consulting practice of his own: private landowners, industrial procurement, and a stretch as a Vermont Deputy Game Warden.
2003
Hollow Hill Forestry
A log and timber marketing firm of his own, joined by his son Wes in 2005. From a yard in Cambridge, New York, they sent logs to markets around the world until June of 2026.
2024
The testimony that became a book
Writing for the House Committee on Environment and Energy, he described himself as fifty years a dirt forester and never a day behind a desk. Legislators, colleagues and family all told him the same thing afterwards: write it down.
2025
The first book
He had never written before. He wrote it anyway, most mornings, with his wife Shari, a teacher and editor, reading over the pages. One hundred and thirty three of them made it into print.
2026
Still writing, still testifying
A second book is underway, the planted chestnuts and apples are growing along with the spring fawns that come to feed, and extra time is spent traveling to the State House.
One small decision to get involved
He is not a lobbyist and he is not a politician. He is a forester who drove to Montpelier because a bill was about to change the woods he had worked in since 1974, and who kept driving back.
Since then he has become a familiar voice at the State House on forestry, wildlife and land use, and he travels around Vermont speaking about the outdoors to anyone who will have him.
Out of the field
See the full gallery
Coming soon
Vermont Stories for Baby Boomers
Working title. A second book, this one a run of short stories about growing up in Vermont in the 1960s and 1970s.
The first chapter is called Inspiration, and it starts with a song he heard in his senior year of high school about paving over paradise. He did not know it at the time, but that was the reason he got involved fifty years later.
4.8
#137 in New England U.S. Biographies
“A great read from the eyes of a true Vermonter.”
