It is morning and this grassy field within view of Mount Rainier, 20 miles south of Seattle, is the antithesis of a construction site. Baby quail bounce through the long grass looking for their mother; a bald eagle soars overhead and Mount Rainier is brilliant white. Three hundred houses are to be built here and on this day the site belongs to the construction nerds, the surveyors. One of them is Erich Hiersche of Triad Associates, Kirkland, Wash. Even though he doesn't wear a pocket protector, he has crammed his vest pockets with butterfly clips, pens, markers and rulers.

U.S. history is dotted with surveyors like George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Lewis and Clark. As people, surveyors are cool and adventurous, with plenty of tattoos and piercings, but their work requires the exactitude of a granny hovering over her knitting. A mistake of a quarter of an inch can be a disaster, and traverse out to feet, depending on how long a distance is between points. For the survey party chief, Hiersche, it's almost impossible to imagine a mistake of that magnitude. "We say surveying is the process of redundant measuring," Hiersche says. Indeed, every point along the walking path the crew is measuring is measured twice to ensure accuracy. "We don't get cocky, cause the one time we don't double check will be the time we make a mistake," says Hiersche.