18 Header The Oregon Surveyor | Vol. 46, No. 6 Member Spotlight in their property boundaries before they have a timber harvest.” The first call that Marcus and I scheduled for this interview, in August, was postponed because Marcus had been sent to an active fire area to monitor the fire’s status. Fires had been confirmed on properties adjacent to properties managed by Cascade Timber Consulting, and they needed to be monitored. “Since the fires were so close to our properties, we had some of our contractors with their By Vanessa Salvia Marcus Helm got into surveying in high school, when he was the type of student who didn’t want to be stuck in class if he didn’t have to be. “One of the classes I took in high school had a part on running level loops,” Marcus recalls. “I spent about two weeks running level loops around the campus in high school.” At the time he thought that was “pretty cool,” and he wanted to study in that area. “The teacher said we could go outside for an hour for every class period while we were outside running loops, and I thought, ‘Cool, I'm not going to be stuck at a desk inside just listening to lectures!’” Being outside and not stuck inside at a desk is something that is appealing for a lot of surveyors, and it is something that Marcus still appreciates about his job. After attending Oregon Institute of Technology in Klamath Falls, Marcus graduated in 2020. Marcus grew up in Galt, California, a city in Sacramento County, and moved to Klamath Falls for school. “And then I stayed,” he said. The closest school to Galt with a surveying degree program was in Fresno, and he considered attending school there which would have been only 2 1/2 hours from home as opposed to 5 1/2 hours away. But he received advice from a high school teacher who encouraged him to attend school in another location. “I was talking to him one day and he said that it was four years of your life and you’d be better off spending those four years seeing something different. He told me, ‘There’s a school in Oregon and I strongly recommend you take the time to go away to college and see what another place is like.’” Marcus says he is “so glad” he listened to his teacher’s advice. After college, Marcus went to work for NorthStar Surveying in Corvallis and lives in the Sweet Home area now, where he works for Cascade Timber Consulting, a timber management company. “We have an in-house surveying team and we survey not only for our lands, but for other lands owned by Weyerhaeuser or other timber companies,” Marcus says. “We put Marcus Helm Cascade Timber Consulting www.cascadetimber.com Marcus and his wife, Ashley.
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