California: Julia Negotiating With Timber Company to Save Giant
Redwood
12/13/99
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RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:
Title: After two years, tree-sitter may be leaving ancient
Redwood; Julia Hill is negotiating with a timber company to
save the huge tree from logging.
Source: The Associated Press
Status: Copyright 1999, contact source for permission to reprint
Date: December 13, 1999
Byline: Michelle Locke
STAFFORD, Calif. - Two years ago, a 23-year-old preacher's daughter
climbed 180 feet into the branches of an ancient redwood, determined
to save it from a woodsman's chain saw.
Since then, Julia Hill, known to her friends as Julia Butterfly, has
changed her life. She also has tried to change the way people look at
California's old-growth forests through an Internet campaign and
interviews with reporters around the world. One more thing may soon
change: She may be coming down from the tree she calls Luna.
"My feet will not touch the ground until there is a signature on
paper saying that they've protected the area but . . . I'm cautiously
hopeful," she said last week.
It is not clear when - or if - Hill's treetop vigil will end. In the
past, she and the Pacific Lumber Co., owners of the property where
Luna stands, have been close to a resolution only to have the deal
stall.
Neither side will discuss specifics, but the proposed agreement
reportedly would have Hill and her supporters pay $50,000 to the
company in return for a logging ban at the tree-sitting site. The
money would then be donated to Humboldt State University for forestry
research. Pacific Lumber also wants signed statements from Hill that
the company hopes will discourage copycats.
"We want her to be safe, but we are not going to agree to anything
that encourages tree-sitting, promotes tree-sitting, allows for the
commercialization of tree-sitting or is unfair to our employees,"
said company spokesman Josh Reiss.
In March, Pacific Lumber and federal and state governments signed a
$480 million deal to purchase an old-growth grove in the nearby
Headwaters Forest and turn it into a public preserve.
Hill stayed put, disappointed that the deal did not go far enough to
protect the forest and concerned that Luna was not in the protected
area.
What she has missed most is the earth beneath her feet.
"I can't imagine how incredible and magical it's going to feel just
to be able to touch the solid earth again," she said.
The forest that Hill calls home soars above the mists, thousands of
dark green spires brushing against a pale gray sky. To the west, the
Pacific hugs the sandy shoulders of the remote Lost Coast, 280 miles
north of San Francisco.
Also visible is the red-brown scar of a mudslide that destroyed seven
homes in the small community of Stafford. Activists blame the slide
on clear-cut logging. The company says it was a natural occurrence.
At Luna's base, the only sound is the rushing murmur of the wind.
About 15 feet across and more than 18 stories high, the tree is a
vast, brown stretch of bark, with one side blackened - probably by
fire.
Suddenly, the silence is broken as a supporter who goes by the name
of Spruce lets out an eerie call, a signal that visitors have
arrived.
Hill yodels back, then lowers a battered black bag containing a
walkie-talkie over which she cheerily announces, "My phone's ringing.
I'm going to grab it real quick and be right with you."
Hill does not have a lot of the comforts of home on her 6-by-8-foot
platform. She cooks vegan meals - those with no animal products - on
a propane stove, uses a bucket for a bathroom, takes sponge baths and
is "never completely warm" on wintry days.
But she has a cellular phone to keep in touch with the outside world;
supporters bring in batteries and food and take out her replies to
the 300 or so people who write every week.
In spare moments she reads, writes and listens to a community radio
station.
For exercise, she climbs the tree and, failing that, does sit-ups and
push-ups. Dealing with wild winter storms and the dank, foggy cold
takes "laughter, love, prayer - and layers of clothing."
"Right now, I'm wearing three pants, three shirts, two jackets, two
scarfs, a hat and gloves," she said on a day when temperatures
hovered in the 40s.
She has been interviewed scores of times. She has been visited by
actor Woody Harrelson and singers Bonnie Raitt and Joan Baez. And,
she has written a book, The Legacy of Luna, due out in April.
"I laugh hysterically every time someone thinks I'm bored or lonely,
because I am busier than I have ever been in my entire life," she
said.
Before she was a tree-sitter, Hill was learning the restaurant
business in Fayetteville, Ark. That life ended with a near-fatal car
wreck that sent her on a pilgrimage west to the woods.
She's not sure what she might do next, but expects it will have
something to do with protecting the environment.
"I climbed up into this tree and in the eyes of the world, I was a
nobody," she said. "Without my meaning to, I've become this
figurehead, this spokesperson and that's opened up a lot of doors and
possibilities."