Bear feet crunched on the blackened fronds, leaves, and branches, carefully picking their

way around the smoldering remnants of the fire.

Plumes of smoke rose from the surface, swirling around the charred remnants of undergrowth

and trees as a light wind blew through what had been until recently a patch of mountain

forest.

The group of men soon arrived at a stand of trees that hadn't burned.

The ground underneath was in a bit of a depression and water collected there after the frequent

rainstorms.

Only the low-hanging branches had caught fire.

So they set to work with their stone axes.

The single pieces of stone ground down to a fine edge by hours of work took chunk after

chunk after chunk from the trunks.

Until finally, the men were able to pull the weakened trees to the ground.

That dripped onto their bare chests from the effort, but it wasn't warm here in the highlands

of New Guinea.

Low-hanging clouds fringed the ridges to the north, rising above the newly cleared meadow

the men had just created.

The sharp, jagged heights rose hundreds of meters above the floor of the valley.

The tree covered tops appearing here and there through the clouds.

To the west, mountains rose still higher into the air, the ridges and peaks disappearing

into the distance.

During their axes, the men headed back into the forest following a well-trotten path.

...