[McLean] was ordered (by his father) through southern Canada and Michigan to purchase a consignment of tall, straight timber for masts, and down into Indiana for oak beams, the young man entered these mighty forests, parts of which still lay untouched since the dawn of the morning of time. The clear, cool, pungent atmosphere was intoxicating. The intense silence, like that of a great empty cathedral, fascinated him. He gradually learned that, to the shy wood-creatures that darted across his path or peeped inquiringly from leafy ambush, he was brother. He found himself approaching, with a feeling of reverence, those majestic trees that had stood through ages of sun, wind, and snow. Soon it became a difficult thing to fell them. When he had filled his order and returned home, he was amazed to find that in the swamps and forests he had lost his heart, and it was forever calling him.

When he inherited his father’s property, he promptly disposed of it, and with his mother, founded a home in a splendid residence in the outskirts of Grand Rapids. With three partners, he organized a lumber company. His work was to purchase, fell, and ship the timber to the mills…. Of the thousands who saw their faces reflected in the polished surfaces of that furniture and found comfort in its use, few there were to whom it suggested mighty forests and trackless swamps, and the man, big of soul and body, who cut his way through them, and with the eye of experience doomed the proud trees that were now entering the homes of civilization for service. (Freckles 7-9)