Andy Mahler and Linda Lee don't just live in and protect the forest. They are the forest.

They live at the end of a dead-end road in the heart of the Hoosier National Forest on 269 acres in Orange County near Paoli. They're surrounded on three sides by the HNF, and it's one mile to their nearest neighbor in any direction.

Andy and Linda sleep outdoors every single night of the year. That's right -- every single night of the year. On an upstairs porch with no screening, mind you. As Andy relates, "When the wind is blowing rain, we wake up wet. When it snows, we wake up with snow in our hair." Bats and flying squirrels zoom by their heads as they sleep.

He and Linda have a "direct personal experience of this intersection of sunlight, weather, climate and soil," Andy says. Linda explains, "We slept with a baby groundhog between our pillows. The forest comes to us." So when Andy says, "We are part of this land," he means it. Literally.

All three of Indiana's forest protection organizations were born of this deep connection: Protect Our Woods, Heartwood and the Indiana Forest Alliance. Andy served as POW's first president from 1985 to 1991. He served as Heartwood's Executive Director from its founding in 1991 to 1999. And he convened the meeting that led to forming the IFA. He now volunteers for all three groups.

Protect Our Woods was launched in response to the U.S. Forest Service's destructive Hoosier National Forest management plan in the mid 1980's. The plan allowed off-road vehicle use. Linda says they just couldn't imagine standing at the kitchen sink having to hear such roaring.

"It was a backyard thing that got us going," she says. POW and other groups, including HEC, garnered so much public support that the Forest Service revised the plan, which originally called for extensive clearcutting and oil drilling. Andy explains that it required intense work for several years. And as he says, it is "something rare and special that we succeeded with our principle objective--having the plan rewritten to protect the forest."

Andy and Linda were joined in the early days of POW by Bob Klawitter of Orange County, who later became a statewide environmental leader. His untimely death in a 1996 automobile accident shocked Indiana's environmental community. He and Andy were so stalwart in their forest protection efforts that they are mentioned in a fourth-grade Indiana history textbook published in 1997 by Harcourt, Brace & Company.

POW is again working on having the Conservationist Alternative plan adopted for the HNF, as a revised plan is once again due.

Another forest issue was the impetus behind Heartwood: logging. Unlike POW and IFA, Heartwood is regional. "We looked across to our neighbors and saw logging increasing in Ohio and Kentucky," Andy says. "There's no solace in protecting your own back yard if your neighbors are suffering."

Andy traveled in a VW vanagon with his part-Pekinese sidekick Min to meet with and help organize groups in other states. Linda earned their income teaching high school English and French; she joined on weekends and in summer. Their vision was to "unite separate voices into a coordinated, cooperative network," Andy says. Heartwood was born in December 1990.

Heartwood is regional to better preserve large tracts of forest and their biodiversity. As Andy says, "It's the forest that connects us, rather than administrative and political boundaries." He explains that Heartwood sees the forest "in the context of bioregion rather than political boundaries."

Andy further explains the natural structure of bioregions: "Rivers are central corridors that connect. The Ohio River is not a border, but the heart of our bioregion. Rivers are arteries at the hearts of our bioregions."

Andy also launched the Indiana Forest Alliance in 1996. Andy says the IFA was born of a need to coordinate the efforts of many different groups across the state. The IFA's primary objective is sustaining Indiana's forests, including the 88 percent that are privately owned.

In addition to volunteering for POW, Heartwood and IFA, Andy and Linda help organize two annual forest events.

The first is the Heartwood Forest Council. This national annual event, now in its 15th year, attracts up to 400 citizens. Andy helps organize this event regardless of where it is held each year.

The second is the Heartwood Reunion, which Andy and Linda host at their Lazy Black Bear farm every year, complete with solar showers, composting toilets and a large barn for meetings and concerts. The event attracts up to 200 forest activists.

The National Forest Protection alliance in Washington, D.C. grew out of one of the many forest meetings Andy and Linda have hosted at the Lazy Black Bear. So did the Forest Reform Network.

In the mid 80's, Texan Ned Fritz, a forest activist of "national repute," as Andy says, traveled across the country in a small plane to visit forest activists. He wanted to build a national network, so he launched a forest Pow Wow, the first of which Andy and Linda hosted on their farm in 1987.

Andy and Linda have also helped launch forest protection networks in Ohio, Kentucky and Missouri, plus the Dogwood Alliance that works to protect the forests of the South.

All these forest protection organizations are a testament to Andy and Linda's deep connection to the forest. Yet Andy explains, "The concept of 'forest' is not separate from the forest in which we live." He further explains, "It's not just the forest.

There are individual trees that I know." Linda adds, "The trees protect us from the ugliness of the outside world. We've seen the big, beautiful vistas of the West. But the hardwoods protect us, as if we're in our mother's skirts."

Andy and Linda are fortunate to be nestled in the bosom of southern Indiana's rolling hardwood forests.

Andy says, "One of the happiest days of my life was convincing the county commissioners to decommission the road to our house." This has helped them feel even more sheltered from the hustle-bustle world in which people too easily perceive nature as something separate to be dominated.

Andy says, "We can imagine that the world is a lovable place in which humans are naturally adapted." He adds, "We live in a world that is beautiful, is in harmony, is beautiful and compassionate."

Andy and Linda live in such harmony with nature that animals waltz right into their home. "Animals migrate into our lives -- and into our house!" Linda says. A mama opossum had a litter in the recycling bin in their kitchen.

But Linda doesn't mind. Her nickname is "Ol' Possum Lady." She's also known as "Marsupial Mom." She's been rehabilitating orphaned opossums for about six years, and she's rehabilitating 29 right now.

Why does she love opposums? Because "they're maligned and mistreated." She explains that they're easy to live with: They go to the litter box, they're very cuddly, and they're very gentle. Andy adds, "Their life span is only one and a half years in the wild--and that doesn't count the interstate highway system."

Linda is such a good surrogate mom that she occasionally offers an intimate space for especially tiny opossum babies who have been deprived of their mother's pouches; she calls it her "living bra."

Raising forest groups and opossums isn't all that Andy and Linda do. Andy helped found and chairs Orange County Community Development, Inc., also known as Orange County HomeGrown. Andy says the basic idea is to "tap into the experience and expertise of people who live here to try to have a shared vision of what our community could be."

Orange County HomeGrown got its start five years ago when the Orange County Economic Development Partnership was holding public meetings to develop a strategic plan. Andy and Linda had jumped in to help their community avert an earlier bad idea promoted by the Economic Partnership: a for-profit prison. As Andy says, it was a "horrid idea with no inclination to release or rehabilitate, but to hold more and more of our fellow citizens."

Four workgroups formed from the strategic planning meetings, with Andy serving as Chair of the Community Development Task Group. The other workgroups are now defunct since the grant money ran out, but Andy and

Linda's work continues in Orange County HomeGrown. This is due to their getting tired of always having to stop bad ideas and wanting to be pro-active instead.

Thus far Orange County HomeGrown has launched two farmer's markets, one in French Lick on Wednesdays, and one in Orleans on Saturdays. And a mural competition amongst high school students, so that now colorful murals grace exterior walls of buildings in French Lick, Paoli and Orleans. And concerts by local musicians. And even poetry readings.

Linda reports that there's an "amazing mélange of people" at the poetry readings. Next on the list is launching a food coop.

And when they're not launching forest groups, rehabilitating orphaned opossums or developing a sustainable local economy for Orange County, you can find Andy and Linda at farmer's markets or on the radio.

You can hear Andy on Bloomington community radio, WFHB, Tuesday at 6 p.m. on "Interchange," a show he co-hosts that features conversations with people engaging in social change. And you can find them both at the Orleans farmer's market every Saturday morning, where Linda sells fresh veggies and flowers from their garden, as well as handmade stationery from recycled seed catalogs and calendars.

You can't miss her--she's the one with the baby opossum on her head.

Denise Baker is editor of the Hoosier Environmental Council newsletter the Monitor.This article appears in the Fall 2005 issue.