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Editor’s Note: Over the next few weeks we would like to introduce our readers to the correspondents who faithfully write town news each week.
UPTON  — Joe Bernier, the columnist for Upton, is self described as an “old fashioned logger.” He uses, “a chainsaw and a skidder – none of that fancy equipment.”
A man of few words, Bernier is a born and raised Mainer who, in his youth, attended Telstar middle and high schools. Logging was introduced into his life from an early age, by his father. “It’s the way he made his living, and I grew up into it,” said Bernier. In high school he worked with his father, before leaving for college.
In 1996, Bernier inherited his family home in Upton, and moved back to Maine. He began with construction work, before eventually moving to logging. “When you’re working the way I am, you can choose your own hours and choose your own days,” he said. “Not on anybody else’s clock.”
He refers to logging as his “retirement job.” His work is freelance, working at any wood lots or companies that might require a hand. He has many firm opinions on the field of logging as a whole. He calls it, “the only sustainable system.” While he objects to excessive clear cutting, he also is of the firm belief that logging as a whole remains good for the forest, clearing out old growth and making way for the new.
He is “really opposed to big plots of lands being held by the government and being totally off limits to everything.” He added by saying, “To take just a thousand acres and shut it off, to me it’s not the right way to do it.”
Bernier has also served the town of Upton on both the planning board and board of selectmen. He dedicated 20 years on the planning board, and served three terms on the selectboard for a total of nine years before going into retirement.
He has taken up residence in the same place where he grew up, on the same property. The house itself has been reconstructed by Bernier himself, when he inherited it from his family. He moved back to Maine in ’96, and has been here ever since. He describes himself as a “borderline hermit,” living out in Upton as he pursues his retirement.

Chaia Alford covers Bethel and the surrounding small towns. He graduated from Dickinson college with a major in archaeology, and a minor in creative writing. He is a passionate fiction writer, who is working...

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