Each year, Justin Lindholm uses about two-and-a-half gallons of gasoline to get through the winter. It’s just enough, he said, to power his chainsaw to chop the four to five cords of logs that fuel his wood stove and heat his home through the season.

“I love working wood, I always have,” he said.

At 71, Lindholm has spent his life nurturing a relationship with the woods and land surrounding his home in Mendon, Vt. He doesn’t like to hike as much as to wander the forest, paying attention to moss and ferns and intricate branch formations of the beech and spruce trees that dominate this stretch of the state. He talks to the animals he passes, in a voice smoother and gentler than he uses with humans. Several times, he’s found himself in a thicket and decided, “I’m not going home, I’m going u

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