The morning was beautiful. The sun had already risen above the horizon, yet shadows of the night still lingered in the forest opening along the road. The mountains stood in the distance, their twilight-blue silhouettes silently and steadily marking the landscape. The road curved like a river running through the ancient forest. There were no others — only these two cars on the road. They were alone, their electric engines echoing in the forest, their headlights piercing the morning mist.

They say that the mist is the dance of forest faries, appearing when the day trades places with the night, and the night with the day. A beautiful allegory, one could say. The two drivers knew of the ancient Norse mythology, and they especially enjoyed the morning drive, feeling a deep sense of belonging to their ancestry.

They were heading to the Våler experimental forest area, where Kåre was already waiting for them. The drivers were representatives from the two largest forest companies in Norway. They were important people — real big cheeses, as an American would say. They were used to making calculated, precise decisions, following the cold logic of profit. These days, however, it was becoming harder and harder to turn a profit. New legislation on timber quality and certification, forest reservations, carbon storage initiatives — all of it needed to be taken into account, woven into calculations, and factored into solutions for maintaining profitability. Not an easy task, one could say. Not an easy one at all.

Waiting for them was Kåre — a man of incredible skill, honed through decades of experience. Starting as a young boy who grew up on a farm by the forest, he elevated ocular assessment to an art of near precision and accuracy. From an early age, when he first learned about the relascope — invented by Walter Bitterlich, then at the forefront of forest inventory — he became fascinated by the idea of developing his body as an instrument for forest assessment. In other words, he never carried any tools with him, and yet he could assess tree height, basal area, diameter, and even the site index with utmost accuracy — often even surpassing modern instruments.

How did he do it, one might ask?