The coastal redwood trees of California in the US are some of the tallest and oldest trees on the planet. They are also unique: they grow nowhere else. Yet they continue to be cut by timber companies.
In the early 1990s, members of an environmental group called Earth First! erected a small platform and began living in one of the redwoods, which had been slated for cutting. They named the tree ‘Luna’. The purpose of this ‘tree-sit’ was, firstly, to prevent the tree being cut and, secondly, to draw wider attention to what was happening. The timber company in this area of north California was not only cutting redwoods, it was also engaged in clear-cutting entire forests of trees. The result of this was that the soil was getting destabilized, resulting in massive erosion of topsoil and frequent landslips on precipitous hillsides. Clear-cutting also threatened other forms of life, which depended for their existence upon the forests.
Most people could only stay up the tree for a few days at a time, and, as winter approached, there were fewer volunteers. Then a young woman named Julia Butterfly Hill became involved. The first time she went up for five days. After she came down again, she heard that nobody else was available to continue the sit. So she went up again. But this time, she didn’t come down for the next two years!
She was, of course, supplied with provisions by a support team on the ground. But she was living on a tiny platform 180 feet up near the top of the tree, which was exposed on the top of a ridge. She survived two of the toughest Californian winters ever, protected by no more than a thin tarpaulin.
The timber company did everything they could to make her come down. They brought a helicopter that generated huge updrafts close to the tree. Later, they trained bright lights on the tree at night and played loud music. They cut other trees surrounding Luna, and they also threatened to cut the tree while she was living in it. Finally they stationed guards around the tree for a while in an attempt to starve her out.
A number of times she was close to giving up. She contracted frostbite, she broke a toe, and she was almost blown out of the tree by storms. Sometimes she didn’t sleep for a week. Yet she survived. And she stayed. How? She wanted to protect Luna for the thousands of people across the country for whom she had become a symbol of hope, “a reminder that we can find peaceful, loving ways to solve our conflicts, and that we can take care of our needs without destroying nature to satisfy our greed.” Above all, she built up a remarkable relationship with Luna itself. In the middle of one of the worst storms, when she was in danger of being blown down to her death, she found herself asking Luna what she should do. Luna told her to imitate the trees, to bend with the wind and not to try to fight it.
Luna became an extension of herself. She kicked off her shoes and climbed barefoot all over the tree, discovering the beauty of its ecology—the animals which inhabited it, and the way in which the top leaves were shaped differently from the lower ones in order to channel the rain to the roots. In fact, Luna became her school and university, her introduction to the inner world of nature.
Julia also had books sent up to her and, later, even a radio and a phone. She became a celebrity, an inspiration for thousands of people, a symbol of what one individual was willing to do to stand for her beliefs. She was frequently interviewed on radio programmes and, on the first anniversary of her tree sit, a celebration was held below which attracted thousands of people. She danced at the top of the tree to the music being played below.
Finally, after protracted negotiations with the timber company who owned the tree, an agreement was signed by which Luna was protected from logging in perpetuity. Two years after climbing the tree, Julia came down on December 18, 1999 to a huge reception. Her first words on the ground were “I feel like I’m being separated from a part of myself, the essence of who I am. I will do my best to live the rest of my life in honour of her and this experience.”
What were the great lessons that she learned? Firstly, she discovered, after she almost died in a terrible storm, that her fear of death had left her. “I understood the power of letting go of all my attachments, including my attachment to myself. When that happens nobody has power over you any longer, and you learn to live moment by moment.” Earlier she had given herself the forest name of butterfly. Now she understood its significance. “That’s the message of the butterfly. I had come through darkness and storms and been transformed.”
Julia also learned not to respond to hatred with hatred, for that is just perpetuating the problem. She frequently talked with the employees of the timber company below, trying to relate to them as human beings rather than as faceless adversaries. In the process she made them see her as an individual rather than as a mad environmentalist.
Above all, she forged a completely new relationship with the natural world and with other human beings. “Luna changed me,” she wrote. “Living in this tree I remembered how to listen, to hear the world and creation speak to me. I remembered how to feel the connection and conscious oneness that’s buried deep inside each of us.”
Afterword: Julia Hill set up the Circle of Life Foundation to activate people through education, inspiration and connection to live in a way that honours the diversity and interdependence of all life. Julia has described her experience in the book The Legacy of Luna. She also wrote another book: One Makes the Difference: Inspiring Actions that Change our World.
Julia Hill has now withdrawn from public life. On her website, she writes, “… as much as I have so loved having the opportunity to be in service, and am humbled and grateful for the myriad areas I have been able to serve and support, the time is past due now for me to transition beyond what people continue to hope and want me to be and do. The weight is too much of a burden for one person to bear.”
(This post is largely drawn from a version written by Alan Herbert, my close friend and collaborator in our Auroville workshops.)
I agree. That more you don’t posses the better you are to act and perform. In ownership lies all our difficulties. When you are free without attachment, you will have the courage of conviction to confront for what is right and generally good. You have no fear, for there is nothing to lose or gain for oneself. If at all there is action, it is for the general good of all that occupy this earth. No one is superior, but we are hear to share and live.
I can understand the troubles and travails that Julia Butterfly Hill has gone through. Until there is that amount of sacrifice and disengaging ownership, and that amount of hell-bent attitude, it is difficult to remove fear from our everyday living.
Only when you completely disown, will others think of helping you in your actions. Further, when people have nothing to gain from you they leave you undisturbed and you buy peace that is much sought after. Not an easy solution though.
Such an inspiring story.. Loved the lines “I understood the power of letting go of all my attachments, including my attachment to myself. When that happens nobody has power over you any longer, and you learn to live moment by moment.” Think there is a lot of truth there. If we let go of that fear we grow into a different dimension where we start seeing things in a very different light!!
But its’ such an anomaly that its’ difficult for us to let go but easy to acquire more and more things that we think defines us..