by Julia Butterfly Hill
On December 10, 1997, 23-year-old Julia "Butterfly" Hill climbed to the top of a 200-foot- tall redwood in northern California. For 738 days and nights she weathered sun, wind, fog and rain, vowing to protect the tree she calls "Luna" from Pacific Lumber Company, which has cut the surrounding forest. Julia's vigil, beginning with the giant tree's discovery on a night lit by the full moon, became the longest tree-sit in history.
Far from isolated, Julia used a cellphone to read poems with Mickey Hart at Woodstock and to speak at a benefit for the Diné people at Big Mountain. She is a commentator on Thin Green Line, a radio program on the Outdoor Life Network. Writers from France, Romania and the US climbed Luna to record interviews with her.
On December 18, after Pacific Lumber agreed to save Luna and all the trees within 200 feet of her, Julia descended. With tears in her eyes, she cried out, "We did it! We did it!" On bare feet, Julia once again walked upon the Earth.
I am 180 feet up, in an amazing, over-1,000-year-old redwood tree in Northern Humboldt, California, above the town of Stafford, California.
This tree-sit was begun because the cutting on this hillside had previously caused a mudslide that went rushing down the hill, destroying seven families' homes in Stafford.
The California Department of Forestry - which I call the Department of Logging because I have yet to see them do anything about forestry - approved this timber harvest plan right next to that mudslide. Activists hiked the timber harvest plan area and found Luna, this amazing, beautiful ancient tree.
When I first climbed Luna and got to the top and saw the Pacific Lumber mill, the first words out of my mouth were, "My God, what I could do with a good rocket launcher from here."
It wasn't that I necessarily wanted to hurt anyone: It was that primal instinct within each of us to strike out at those who are hurting us, at the ones who are causing pain, suffering and destruction.
But up here in Luna, I've learned the importance of love. I've learned the importance of nonviolence and respect. It is something that I always had inside me, but before coming up here and learning what I've learned, it was more of a conditional love. I had that instinct within me to stop people that are doing harm, at all costs.
Up here, I've learned the power of love and the power of positive acting and positive thinking. It has worked amazing results.
Loggers have come up to the clearing behind Luna and pulled the chainsaws off the back of their trucks, saying that they were going to cut me down. And then I just talked to them for a little while and they ended up becoming my friends. It has happened with the mill workers, the loggers, and their children. Some of them even come back to visit now.
In activism, sometimes we get so caught up in the science and the politics, we forget about the importance of spirit. It's not easy staying positive when, all around me, trees are smashing into the ground; when I see miles of new clearcuts; when I've had to sit through slash burns for weeks; when the fumes from the diesel engines fueling the clearcuts is choking me.
They can do whatever they want to me physically. But as long as I stay centered in the universal power of love, they can't ever destroy that. That's a power the government can't sign away with its bad laws. It's a power that the companies can't destroy.
When I realized I was going to be up here for a while, it really hit me that my demands were going to be more on myself than on Pacific Lumber: I was not going to allow my feet to touch the ground again until I felt I had done everything I possibly could to make the world aware and to make a difference.
I'm going to keep reaching out to this company, to the world. I'm going to forever take a stand against the destruction. I'm never going to back down. I'm never going away. Even when I come down out of this tree, whether it's been saved or not, I'm trying to be absolutely the best and the most effective person I can be.
It is going to take a huge uprising of people coming together to take the power back - whether we're human rights activists, animal rights activists, or Earth rights activists, we're all taking a stand for quality of life.
People are going to have to be willing to know that sometimes sadness, suffering, pain, and even death are results of taking a stand against corporatized government.
We're talking about centuries of wrong thinking and wrongdoing that we're going to have to reverse. Just snapping our fingers is not going to make that happen. But I have a lot of hope, because I know a lot of people are saying, "Enough is enough." People are taking to the trees, taking to the streets, taking to the stores and reclaiming the Earth for the Earth's people.
Excerpted from an interview with Julia Butterfly by Megan "Turtle" Southern published in the Ecofeminist Journal [Box 8869, Tucson, AZ 85738, (520) 825-6852, www.envirolink.org/arrs/far]
Offerings to Luna
A tree
a life so many years gone by
history bound in each new
ring and every scar
I lay nestled in Her arms
I listen to all She has to say
She speaks to me through my
bare feet ... my hands
She speaks to me on the
wind ... and in the rain
telling me stories born long
before my time
Wisdom
as only Ancient Elders know
Truths
passed to me through
Nature's perfect lips
She cries
Her overwhelming grief
sap that clings to me ...
to my soul
I wrap my arms around Her
offering the only solace
that I know
giving myself as the only gift
I have to give
a pitiful offering
to a Goddess such as this
but of myself
it is all that I have to give.
- Julia Butterfly Hill
The Legacy of Luna by Julia Butterfly Hill (HarperCollins) will be published in time for Earth Day. The film, "Luna: The Stafford Giant Tree Sit," won the Hoimar von Ditfurth Prize at Germany's Okomedia film festival. For more information: Headwaters Action Video Collective [Box 2198, Redway, CA 95560, (707) 925-0012, www.headwatersforest.org and www.lunatree.org.
Out on a Limb