Two Apprenticeships, One Bold Career Path

At 15, our family friend Lucien finished school and stepped straight into a life of hands-on learning outdoors. Growing up, his father worked in landscaping, and Lucien spent countless weekends hiking with his family or climbing with the Swiss Alpine Club.

Being outside was always my thing. So choosing landscaping felt natural.

Why Two Apprenticeships?

After completing three years as a landscaper, Lucien felt he wasn’t done learning. (He was around 18 by then — just in time to begin a second apprenticeship.)
His brother was already working as a lumberjack, and our dad (who also did that training) encouraged him to try it too.

Your dad told me, ‘If you want to learn how to really work hard, go through lumberjack training.’ And he was right!

Thanks to his previous experience, Lucien was able to complete the second apprenticeship in just two years instead of three.

Double Skills, Double Confidence

Two apprenticeships gave Lucien an edge.

Landscaping taught me aesthetics, while lumberjack work taught me precision and safety. Together, they make you a better professional.

He also learned how to use chainsaws in extreme conditions, including up in trees with ropes — a skill that’s become essential in his current work.

It’s a huge advantage when you’re an arborist.

San Francisco and New Horizons

After his second apprenticeship, Lucien’s curiosity took him far from the Swiss mountains.

I wanted new challenges, new experiences — to see a different way of working and improve my English.

So he came to San Francisco, lived with us for a year and a half, and worked in our dad’s tree company, Arborist Now, which specializes in tree care and removal. It gave him hands-on experience in a different environment and helped expand his skills even further.

A Job That’s Not Without Risk

After returning from the U.S., Lucien spent a year and a half working for a mobile cable crane company.

The job involved setting up cable systems to extract felled trees from forests.

We’d install the cable line, move out the wood, then take everything down and start again on a new site.

One day, he was operating the machine near a river while his coworker was hooking logs in the forest.

Suddenly, there was a massive jolt — the main support cable snapped under the weight of the trunks.

The cable, possibly defective, wasn’t supposed to break.

The whole bundle of cable dropped right in front of me. Thankfully no one got hit — but it was a dangerous moment.

He adds, after a pause:

It’s a dangerous job.

Starting His Own Company

At 26, Lucien launched his own arborist business, Treebreathe — a name that reflects his deep connection to trees and the natural world.

I always wanted to do things my way. In a company, I sometimes saw better ways to work, but the boss didn’t want to listen. So I thought, why not just create my own path?

Lucien has also founded an association to raise awareness about the work of lumberjacks and to invite people to tree-planting mornings in the forest, giving them a chance to ask questions and see the job up close — and to break the stereotype that lumberjacks only cut trees without respecting nature.

Now, five years later, he runs a business that reflects everything he values: skill, safety, and a close connection to nature.

I wouldn’t change a thing. Everything I’ve done — even the tough parts — brought me here.

From Trees to Paper: A Summer Collaboration

This summer, I had the chance to work with Lucien in a different way — not in the trees, but on paper. He asked me to create a custom card for his clients, something that would reflect the care and professionalism he puts into his work as an arborist. I took inspiration from his website to come up with the design, and delivering these cards in Switzerland was such a special project for me. It combined creativity, gratitude, and the connection between two small businesses built with care.

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