National Park After Dark - She Speaks for the Trees: Headwaters Forest Reserve

Episode Date: June 27, 2022

Grab your climbing gear and protest signs because this week we are heading to Humboldt County California to fight to save the redwood forest. We are following the journey of Julia Butterfly Hill as she tree-sits in one of the tallest and oldest redwood trees that has been marked to be clearcut, along with the redwood forest surrounding it. She is harassed, threatened, and almost loses her life more than once, but she's in this fight for the long haul. For the latest NPAD updates, group travel details, merch and more, follow us on npadpodcast.com and our socials at:Instagram: @‌nationalparkafterdarkTikTok: @‌nationalparkafterdarkSupport the show by becoming an Outsider and receive ad free listening, bonus content and more on Patreon or Apple Podcasts. Want to see our faces? Catch full episodes on our YouTube Page!Thank you to this week’s partners!Xanterra Travel Collection: Become and employee and get FREE shared onsite housing.Feals: Use our link and become a member to get 50% off your first order plus free shipping. Hello Fresh: Use our link and code NPAD16 for up to 16 free meals plus 3 free gifts.Prose: Use our link for a free in-depth hair consultation and 15% off your first order.For a full list of our sources, visit http://npadpodcast.com/episodes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Monday AI agents took over my work. And I absolutely love it. Chasing deadlines, writing status reports, updating stakeholders. Agents handle the daily grind now. They live inside Monday.com. So they see the full picture. My work, my team, the whole company. And I don't have to worry about the data.

It's safe, which means I'm free to focus on the big stuff, knowing everything runs smoothly in the background. It's completely shifted the way we work. Create your own AI agent in minutes on Monday.com. Girl, winter is so last season. And now Springs got you looking at pictures of tank tops with hungry eyes. Your algorithm is feeding you cutoffs. You're thirsty for the sun on your shoulders.

That perfect hang on the patio sundress. Those sandals you can wear all day and all night. And you've had enough of shopping from your couch. Done hoping it looks anything like the picture when you tear up on that envelope. It's time for a little in-person spring treat. It's time for a trip to Ross. Work your magic. In the world we live in today, with huge corporations, million-dollar budgets, and politicians seemingly running everything,

it can feel very hard to make a difference. As it stands, you are just one person. How can only one person make any type of impact on the planet? It can feel discouraging to see something that needs to change and feel like your voice, is so incredibly small. But for this, we're going to tell a story of a small voice that with will, dedication, and determination inspired the world and made a change that can still be felt today. Welcome to National Park After Dark. This sounds like a more uplifting and inspiring story than we're used to. It is. It definitely is. I was.

feeling a little bit less on the morbid side this week and more on a conservation, save of the world kind of story. I feel like everybody needs a little bit of an uplifting moment. So I'm glad that you're providing that to us today. It kind of went from like when I had my amazing animal episode where I'm like, I just want cool stories that are like kind of happy. Yeah. That was kind of my thought with this one. I'm like, I don't really want this to be super morbid. Not that it doesn't have like some serious aspects to it, but it's kind of leads into a feel-good story. Okay. Well, I did want to say, first of all, before we begin, happy late birthday.

You're now 31 years old. Welcome to the club. How do you feel? I feel fantastic. I like being in my 30s. I do. And it's funny because I was talking to someone the other day and she's like, I just listened to your episode and you were turning 30. I'm like, oh my God, I'm 31 now.

I know, it's been a whole year. It was the Bessie Hyde episode. I turned 30 in. And now we're in California for this episode. And we're physically in Washington. This is one of the first episodes that we are actually recording together in person. Cassie came out to visit me. And also, last thing before we start, I did want to say thank you to everyone for the absolute outpouring of love.

after Ian's episode that we released a few days ago, it's certainly been a very, very difficult time to say the least. It's been very difficult for me. And to know that there are so many people that I've never met that are rooting for me and lending me support and kind words. It is very, very appreciated and I'm just very thankful for that in a time that it seems like the world is shit and dark that is a light you guys are a light so thank you for for being that for me yeah it really has been a time where it's been like when we first started this we were nervous that we were going to get a lot of hate and like not really you know just like not kindness because we're putting ourselves out there and not that we haven't been reaffirmed throughout this entire process that you

guys are wonderful, but this has been like such a significant, horrible part of this journey where everyone has been so, so kind. Yeah, so thank you. And I'm, I'm not going to get emotional. I'm not going to get emotional. I'm going to try and just zip that right now because otherwise you don't even want, I can't cry on air anymore. So I want to hear about some saving of the trees, please. Okay, I can definitely do that. For this episode, we're going to head to Headwaters. That's a fun, say that three times fast. We're going to head to Headwaters Forest Reserve, which is located in Northern California in the Humboldt County area. So this is an area that consists of 7,472 acres of old growth coastal redwood groves that are managed by the Bureau of Land Management

as part of the National Landscape Conservation System. That is helpful. I was just going to say, that's a lot of words I put into one sentence. It's a protected area of redwoods, essentially. Gotcha. And this is one of the largest groves of redwood trees in California, and it's one of the largest in the whole world. These trees are thousands of years old,

and there are also other plant life that lives here, such as Douglas firs, Sitka spruce, Western Red Cedar, Western Hemlock, and Red Alder. also protects a variety of wildlife here, some of which are the threatened marble merlet, which is a PNWC bird, and it also protects the northern spotted owl and native salmon stock. So there's a lot of cool stuff going on in this little area. This place was established as a reserve in 1999 after a 15-year effort to save the forest. However, the Redwood Preservation Movement has been in full swing since around the year 1918 when a nonprofit organization was founded that is known as Save the Redwoods League. So saving the Redwoods in California had been this big movement for a long time.

And it had originally started when the coastal forests around San Francisco and the Santa Cruz Mountains were being logged. And this included the creation of Redwoods National Park, which isn't exactly where we're going to be today. But it's in the realm of the same area. Same area, same movement. Mm-hmm. Gotcha. It's connected to a national park. Everyone.

It's national part adhesion. Give us a fucking break. Sorry. I'm just, my tolerance is very low. Not that you guys would call us out. Not that you guys care at all, but we just like to tie in some type of the sass that just came out. Sorry. It's like, no one was mad.

Relax. Like, no one was mad. Everyone just, like, sat back and they were like. You know, and you're like reprimanded by your parents and you didn't actually do anything, but you're sorry. They're like, oh, God, okay. It's like, I'm very sorry. I did that. So it was part of the Redwoods National Park, like how that was created. The Redwoods National Park started being discussed to be created in the 1920s, but it was actually not created as a national park until 1968.

The Headwaters Forest Reserve was originally privately owned by the Bandsenews. Pacific Lumber Company and it was managed by a man by the name of Charles Hurwitz who had also owned another company which was known as Maxim Inc and they had originally bought this area of the Headwaters Forest Reserve from a different logging company prior to them and they had been known for really sustainably logging they pick certain areas they'd allow regrowth and this was going on for a very long time before Charles Hurwitz took over and when that happened he switched from the logging practices the sustainable way and he saw dollar signs essentially and he decided that he was set on clear cutting the entire area they clear cut over 60% of the reserve including

35 miles of road construction that they put through so some of this was literally just to build a road I can see where this is going it's like we're mad I'm mad and the effects of this massive clear cutting was almost immediate you know it was affecting the watersheds in the area and it severely affected and accelerated the erosion of the area. The Pacific Lumber Company had clear-cut almost all of the trees atop a mountain where several homes were at the base of it. This area where they had clear-cut was eventually hit with a rainstorm with torrential downpours. There were heavy winds and because there were no trees in this area it created a massive landslide that destroyed seven houses. Now luckily,

during this slide, someone had noticed what was happening and they ran to all of his neighbor's houses essentially and was like, get out, get out, the mountain is falling. And everyone was evacuated before it actually hit the houses and no one was injured, thankfully. But there were seven different families that lost their homes. That's very significant, losing your whole entire house. Yeah. And then your properties ruined too. So not to say like five, are any better because they're certainly not. But now there's nowhere to even build a house after that. Right. The Stafford County residents blamed the logging company for this and blamed them for all of the clear-cutting they had done. But a lot of the residents here were really hesitant to actually say anything to them

personally because Stafford County was a very small town. And a lot of these people who lived there were employed by the Longport Company. Gotcha. So they didn't want to ruffle any feathers of their fellow community members and disrupt anybody's livelihood and things like that. Well, that was it is they made their livelihood this way and then they just lost their home. So it's like, I need money. I don't have a house. What am I going to, what am I going to do essentially? But eventually, the blame did fall on the company and people did say something to them.

And this caught the attention of the mayor in the area who also confronted them and said, you know, we really think that you did do this. The lumber company came back and said, you know, No, we didn't do this. This was an act of God. And the storm was brought by God. And that was the reason for the landslide. Okay. So this, I can't even justify any part of that. Yes, the storm was not brought on by the logging company, but irresponsible logging practices contributed to what happened to those homes. So there's no explaining that away by pinning it on God. No. And luckily, the governor agrees with your take on this as well and said, no, you clear-cutted irresponsibly. You did this.

And people thought that that might bring change, but it didn't. There was essentially nothing that happened after they were blamed for this. And actually, very soon after this happened, the California Department of Forestry approved a plan to clear-cut an area that was directly next to where the landslide happened. Okay, so no steps forward in any meaningful direction. No. What the company was not planning on was that this area that they had just planned to clear cut and remove every single tree from there was a tree here named Luna that was going to be very important and a young woman named Julia Butterfly Hill was about to throw a huge roadblock on their plans. This episode is brought to you by Prime. Obsession is in session and this summer Prime Originals have everything

you want. Steamy romances, irresistible love stories, and the book to screen favorites you've already read twice. Off campus, L, every year after, the love hypothesis, Sterling Point, and more. Slow burns, second chances, chemistry you can feel through the screen. Your next obsession is waiting. Watch only on Prime. Julia was born in Mount Vernon, Missouri on February 18, 1978. She grew up in a religious family with her parents. They were named Dale and Kathy, and she also had two brothers named Michael and Daniel. Her father was a traveling preacher, which kept their family on the road and living in an RV. So they were a pretty poor family. They had five of them living in a very small RV. They had

very little means to things. Their main focus and what she was raised on was that religion was most important along with helping other people. And then you took what you needed second. Eventually, By the time Julia reached high school age, they did settle down in Arkansas, and here she lived a pretty average teenager life. She was no longer on the road anymore. They had a house. She was hanging out with friends. She was working. She was saving money where she could and going to school.

So she was essentially a normal teenager eventually. It wasn't until August 1996 when she got into a really bad car accident that her life really began to change, though. In the crash, she had hit her head and she suffered short-term memory issues, and she was, lost some motor skills. Doctors weren't sure if she was going to be able to walk and just like think again. So she needed to go through intensive therapy. But after almost a year of intensive therapy, she did heal. She did get better and she was ready to live her life again. And this near death experience changed the trajectory of her entire life. She had found the importance of making every moment in what she was doing and she decided, this is my time. I need to go figure

out like what I'm going to do with my life. What does my life mean? And what is my purpose here, essentially? So with this revelation, she decided that in order to find this, she needed to travel the world. The opportunity did present itself several months later when her neighbors and one of their friends had asked if they would accompany them on a road trip out west. And specifically, they wanted to come up to Olympic National Park in Washington. Not a bad destination. Right across the country. And their friends, they originally had four people going, but one of them had backed out. So they pretty much said, Julia, we can't afford gas.

Please come with us. Like, we need this extra person to divide the costs. Yeah, I know what that is like. I've been there, totally get it. And she was like, yeah, this is exactly what I'm looking for. She jumped at the opportunity and she agreed to go. Now, along the way, they had run into a stranger. And they were talking to them, and they suggested that if they were heading west,

They needed to stop in Humboldt County in California to stop and see the enormous redwood trees. Now this person was so convincing that this place was so amazing that they listened to the stranger's advice and they made a pit stop in Grizzly Creek Redwood State Park. And this is a small park that sits along the Van Dusen River and has three separate units of coastal redwoods. They get out, they're super excited to see this. But when they arrive, there are a bunch of signs there that say dogs are not allowed on the trails. and they had a dog with them. So their group decided that they would do a short walk along the road to look at the redwoods that wasn't actually like in the park

but just to kind of look at them from afar. But for Julia, this wasn't enough at all. She was like, no, we're here. This is amazing. I came here to experience this. And she just felt this deep desire to see these giant ancient trees. She wanted to go on the trails. So essentially what she did is she told her friends what she wanted to do.

they said, okay, we're staying here for 15 minutes. It's going to be a quick stay. If you're not back in time, we're just going to keep heading out on our road trip. She's like, okay, if I'm not back in 15 minutes, just drop my stuff at the Ranger Station and I'll figure it out from there. What? That seems very weird to me. Right. What do you mean? I would never just leave my friend and like, oh, well, this is a 15 minute stop. It's like go to the bathroom or if you're not out in 10 minutes like we're we're leaving you in behind yeah abandoned I was not prepared for that but okay julia didn't care though she was down for that she's like you know I'm gonna go check it out if I really like it here and you don't want to hang out like that's cool I'll figure it out so she heads

deeper and deeper into the forest and she sees the trees are becoming larger and the ground was filled with these bright colors of the fungus the lichen the moss and she was just a enamored by these enormous sized tree chunks. This was a site that she had never seen before. She was in the southeast. She had never seen these huge old growth forests. Julia felt connected to this area immediately. And she recognized just how old these were. And she sat there and she pondered the history that these trees had seen. And she really just sat there and was like, wow, this is a place that is bigger than me. She was humbled. So humbled. This is the first time that I think that she really felt small.

Mm-hmm. It's like the world is so big. So much has happened here. I love my favorite. One of my favorite quotes is travel to places that make you feel small. Maybe I just butchered that. But it's something like that. You know, it's just like I like traveling to places or travel in general, but some places in

particular kind of what you're describing right now really just put you in your place a little bit, you know, because you think that you're the center of your own world sometimes. And then when certain events happen or when you go to certain places, they really kind of have a way of making you realize that you're really not as big as you think you are and you're small. You're so small. And I think if you, I think a lot of people can relate to that too, especially if you go to any place that is vast and big. I know, like, I've gone out to the desert and if you stand on the edge of a canyon, and you're like, oh my God. Or if you're up in the mountains after a hike and you're looking out for miles and miles, you're like, I am so small. I actually had a moment like that recently. My friend,

Hannah and I, we went to the North Cascades and we did a hike up Thunder Creek Trail and we looked over Diablo Lake and we were sitting there and she's like, wow, I feel so small right now. Like this is so big and it's so massive here. And it sounds like when you say that when you, you're like, I feel so small. It almost sounds like a negative thing, but it's not. No, I think it's very, it's a fulfilling feeling. Fulfilling feeling. Sounds weird. Another mouthful. Yeah. It is. And this is exactly the experience that Julia was having. And she was so moved by these feelings that she actually sat down and she just cried. She was like, this is changing my life. This is going to change my life and I can feel it right here. And it was very shortly after this experience that she just had this fire that

would be ignited in her. Two weeks after she visited this place, she learned that the Pacific Lumber Company slash the Maxim Company that Charles Hurwitz also owned had clear-cut tons of trees in that area. In fact, if she had walked just a couple hundred feet further on the trail that day, she would have seen the amount of devastation that was caused in all of the trees that had been removed. She learned a little bit more about these redwood trees and she learned that only 3% of them were left in the world because they were being cut down for things like lumber and lawn furniture and immediately she was angry. Learning that such a sacred and magical place was being destroyed for something as futile as greed pushed Julia into her purpose in the world. Her desire to travel

the world had changed and she had found her calling and it was to try and and save the redwood trees of California. So she went from, I need to travel the world, I need to find it, to I don't need to travel the world. I just had to go to California. Right. And I found it right here. And she just needed to figure out a way that she could do it.

She had no idea. She had been there. She heard that bad things were happening. And she's like, okay, now what? So Julia flew home and she sold everything that she owned except a violin, some artwork, and some photographs that she had. Then with the money that she got from all of her belongings, she bought a tent, a backpack. in a sleeping bag. She then returned to California in November of 1997, where she began her fight to

save the Redwoods. When she first arrived here, there wasn't a lot of work to be done to help the forest, and that's because she showed up in November. It was right before winter was coming, and a lot of people were packing up their things and getting ready to head home. And part of this was clear cutting slowed down a little bit, but also the weather started getting dangerous to be out there. But for Julia, this was really frustrating because she had just sold all of her belongings and moved up her entire life and headed out there. And she really wanted to help. So she kind of just hung out for a few weeks and was like, can I help? Can I help? You guys have anything for me? Friends like, no, we don't. Like, who are you? And you came at the wrong time. You came at the wrong time.

And it was actually after a couple weeks that she got there that she finally had the opportunity to do something. And one of the activists that were working for an environmental organization known as Earth First needed someone to tree sit. And tree sitting is something that happens, essentially when all other options have been exhausted and petitions had failed, reaching out to government officials had failed, explaining why what was happening was wrong had failed. And now the only option that people had to save an area or, in this case, to save a tree, was to physically put yourself in the tree to prevent its removal. You can't cut down a tree and kill someone. So the only other option is to head into it. it so activists would sit up in days inside trees and they would plead their cause and try and prevent the trees from being

cut down and hopefully it would prevent the trees that were immediately next to it from being cut down as well. So this person approached her and said, we need someone to trace it and it's a tree that has been named Luna. Julia really didn't know anything about it except that she wanted to be part of it. So she immediately volunteered and said, yeah, like I'll do it. I don't have any experience. I have no idea what I'm doing, but I learn fast. And I'm ready. And the person was like, oh, you have literally no experience. It's winter. I don't know if I want to send you. But there was no one else to do it. So he agreed to let her go out. And when she arrived, it was immediately clear that Luna was not like the other redwood trees. So she stands on top of a steep mountain cliffside and towers over other redwood trees around her. Standing at almost 200 feet tall with a circumference of 40 feet, she can be seen from miles away. It is estimated that she has lived here for over.

over a thousand years, and over time she has survived forest fires, massive windstorms, and lightning strikes. She has large charred holes in her trunk from the strikes, along with black scar burns that extend all the way up her trunk. She has survived a lot over her 1,000 years of life, but now, stained onto her bark, she has a dark blue paint mark indicating that she has been chosen to be cut down. Well, in the eyes of the lumber company, I'm sure she's worth a lot. of money being so huge. Yeah. It's all money. It's all dollar signs. Because Luna was so massive, her lowest tree branches were much too high to reach, and this required climbing ropes and harnesses to be able to reach a platform that had been built to treason. The platform sit in its branches

at 180 feet from the ground and was exposed to extremely high winds. When Julia arrived for her first night of tree sitting, it was a full-blown storm. A tartar. A tartary. covered the platform area but was frequently blown upwards and she was left exposed to the wind and rain. Her first time up there, she was joined by two other people who use like trail names, how the AT always uses trail names. They were, they used trail names and they were named Major Reson and Shakespeare. And I want to say I did get a lot of this resources from a book because I just realized I haven't mentioned it yet. Oh, okay. And I did. So I read this book. It's called The Legation of Luna, the story of a tree, a woman, and the struggle to save the Redwoods by Julia Butterfly

Hill. And she is the woman that we're talking about in the story today. I did reference and get a lot of my research from this book. Highly recommend it. I'll put it the link in our show description and everything like that. But she is the one who told this story essentially in her book. And I'm definitely not going as far into detail as she does. And I did use a lot of other resources for like information and things like that. But her story is amazing. And we'll talk a little bit more about it later. But I just thought of that because that's where I learned their trail name. So she talked about them. So the platform that she was on 180 feet high up into this tree was constantly swaying in storms. And none of them were strapped into anything sometimes. When they slept at night, if they were to move or roll over too

far, they would just fall right off the platform and die. Why wouldn't you secure yourself with ropes? Well, they didn't have enough supplies, essentially. They didn't have enough harnesses. And Julia was so new, she didn't even know she needed a harness. And she showed up to this with literally nothing, almost. A violin. A violin and some artwork. And she had to use a harness that she borrowed from someone and there just wasn't enough supplies up there. So you were sleeping. I was just kind of like, okay, you got to be really careful up here. It's not safe. For this first tree sit, they had planned to stay up in the tree for seven days.

But after six days, with a storm never letting up, Julia had an opportunity to come down early and she took it. There was another activist that took her to the jail support. courthouse. And this was a location where activists who were jailed during their protests could come back for a warm meal, a real bed, and a shower. So they brought her here and was like, thank you for doing that. Like, have a shower. We just threw you in the fire here. You just slept in a storm for days on a really scary tree. So have some food. But she was only there for one day when an activist asked if she could go back up into the tree and sit at Luna and protect her. And without hesitation, she agreed. She was now actually relieving major resin and Shakespeare,

who she had been sitting with previously from their duties so that they could have a break. It was also, I think it's important to note that someone had to be on top of Luna all the time because if not, she was in danger of being cut down, especially because she had become this known tree that people were sitting in. If they had come out of the tree, it would have just been cut down. Okay, so the tree needed constant support from the sitters. Yeah, they were essentially doing shifts. Julia stayed on the platform for days again, but this time after the fifth day, she got very sick.

She was plagued with a fever, chills, she had hot and cold flashes. And the worst part about this was she was up in this tree, and they didn't have any phones, and their satellite camp was empty at that point. So she actually had to wait for an activist to show up physically to relieve her of her duties. And another important thing to just to put in your mind of Luna is she's not something you can just drive to and climb up. It's like a haul of a hike to get to her. So she was sick for quite a few days before anyone did show up to come get her. And when she finally did come down from the tree, the first thing she did was she ran behind it and she started vomiting.

Then she had to walk a couple miles back to camp, during which she almost passed out four different times. When she finally did make it back, she had a friend bring her to the hospital. hospital and it turned out that she was actually battling two different viruses at the time and one of them had gone to her kidneys. So she was severely sick and it took her several weeks before she recovered and in which time she didn't actually stop working for the cause. She just took up more administrative duties. So she spent a lot of time creating posters and flyers and she would talk to people about the cause and sleep in a warm bed and drink enough water. And, you know, like while she's recovering, that's serious commitment. It is. She's like, yeah, I was sick. Like, throw me back in. I'm ready. By December,

the Pacific Logging Company was getting a lot closer to Luna. Their clear cutting of the area had begun, and every single day they were cutting closer and closer to where she was. And meanwhile, the activists were struggling. Having people come up and down from the tree was really confusing, and it was not well executed, and they had a lack of communication. We said before, they didn't all have cell phones. They didn't know how long people were going to be. there and also they were short-staffed essentially a lot of people were going home for the winter and they were really struggling to find people who would stay on top of Luna for long periods of time. One thing that really impacted this as well is the Pacific Lumber Company as they started getting

closer, they started using scare tactics on the sitters. So they started threatening to blow the tree up from the bottom and they would have people in the tree and they're like, okay, we're just going to blow it up and you're going to die and fall out of the tree. Like, if you stay up there, so you might as well come down. And at one point, they did it to a woman who was up there. And she got really scared. And she came down and she ran out and there was no one. Or there were, I think there was one person left.

But there was always supposed to be more than one person there. So with these struggles, Julia actually came up with a plan. And she related to a fellow activist who went by the name of Almond. Her idea was that she wanted to stay up on the platform for longer periods of time. She wanted to just go up. with plenty of supplies, have a cell phone with her, have plenty of food, and not have to keep doing these relays of people and having people come up all the time. She's like, I'll stay it for a month, I'll stay it for six weeks, let's just do long periods, so it makes more sense. And Almond really

liked her idea, and he agreed to come on to the platform with her for a month. So over the next few days, they gathered all their supplies they needed, and Earth First supplied them with a cell phone. Because Luna was located on Pacific Lumber's property, it was a big risk of being arrested for trespassing if you were caught. So they actually had to hike up to Luna during the night. And during this night, that Almond and Luna were heading up, they almost got caught by a logger before ducking into the woods and off the trail. So it was pretty scary. They're at a high risk here. It's dangerous being up in the tree.

They can be arrested. It's risky. It's so risky. When they did finally reach Luna, they found two other sitters in the tree, which actually had not been expected. They thought that they were relieving a single sitter so they could go home, but these two were actually planning to stay one more night. So this left them with a little bit of a pickle because now there were four of them on this tiny platform. They did have a hammock that someone could sleep in and then Julia, along with the two others, slept on the platform that night.

Among this issue with now more people, one of the tree sitters who had been in there originally had accidentally taken the harness that would have been Julia's with them. So she was actually left with only one harness between her and almond. The next morning, as the two others began to repel down to leave, they heard a whack, whack, whack against the tree. And they noticed that loggers had began cutting at her with their axes. The two of them that were repelling down began yelling and begging for them to stop. But at this point, they're 150 feet up in the air, just hanging.

from ropes. And Almond, who was still on the platform with Julia, wanted to see what was going on. And because he did have a harness, and Julia didn't, he decided that he would go out onto these traverse lines, which were essentially rope lines that you could walk on that connected to other trees. But Almond was very, very new at this, and he had never actually been on one before. So he strapped himself in and he walked out here, but there's a lot going on at the same time. As soon as he started walking across, he saw a logging climber scaling the tree across. And this man was recognized immediately as being a known climber named Dan. He worked for the Pacific Logging Company and was known to have a very short temper and that he would physically climb into trees and take tree sitters out of them. And it was known that if you

saw him, it was never a good sign. So he started yelling at almond and he said, I'm going to get you. And he started climbing up towards the traverse line that almond was standing on. Now this reverse line was not made to hold two people. And if Clymer Dan had walked out onto it, there was a really good chance that it would break. So Almond was obviously very concerned about this because he was standing on it and he warned him. He said, please don't come out here. It's not rated for both of us to be out here. It's not safe. It's not safe. Don't come out here. But Clymer Dan didn't really believe him and he thought that this was just a trick to try and get him to leave. He's like, come on, I'm not dumb. I know you're just trying not to get caught right now. But he was afraid to risk his own life. So he came up with a different idea. Instead of

climbing across the traverse line to get to Allman to try and get him down, he decided that he would just cut the reverse line that Almond was standing on. And part of why he wanted to cut this line was because the tree that he had been climbing next to Luna was one that they wanted to cut down. And if it had a line attached to it, they could not choose the direction that it fell in. They couldn't. Okay. I gotcha. So that was a big reason why he also wanted to cut the line. And he thought, Almond, he's this, they thought of him as like tree hugger, hippie climber type. He's like, I can cut the line. He's strapped in.

I can cut my tree down. It doesn't matter. But Almond begged him not to cut the line and he told him that he was very new at climbing and he had forgotten to clip in his safety ropes. So if he had cut the traverse line that he was on, that he would fall 180 feet because he'd would no longer be attached to anything. Why would he, why would anyone think that, oh, they've got it, I can just cut this rope that they're standing on 180 feet in the air? It's reckless. That doesn't make any sense at all. No. And he's like, you're sneaky. You're this climbing. You're just trying to stop me from doing my job. Like, you're just trying to trick me. Was Climerdand's perspective of this? But like,

yours makes way more sense. Why would you cut a line that could kill someone? That could endanger someone's life. I have a question, kind of a side note. So you said when obviously they're hiking up to Luna and so they're obviously trespassing and breaking the law. What about tree sitting? Is that technically against the law? It's considered a peaceful protest. Okay. Even though you trespassed to gain access to the tree. Yeah. But if you are caught accessing the tree, you can be arrested, but once you're actually in the tree. It's a peaceful protest. test. Yes. Okay. That makes sense. As far as everything I read. Okay. Because it sounded like if they're on the ground, that's when they get arrested, but the tree that they're saved. But so he's up in the tree.

He's threatening to cut the traverse line. And climber Dan still doesn't believe him. He's like, no, I don't believe you. This is another trick. So Dan cuts the rope. Of course he does. Luckily, Almond had stepped back just in time and far enough that when he fell, which he did, he fell two and a half feet before he landed on one of Luna's branches. So if he hadn't stepped back, he would have fallen to the ground. Yeah. After this, it was total chaos. Of course, lots of shouting was coming from every direction from the two that were hanging

from Julia. She's freaking out. And of course, Almond starts yelling. Like, you almost killed me. And Julia is horrified from the platform. And she has no harness, so she can't do anything. She's just stuck there. She's very new.

It's not like she's a good tree climber at this point. She's not comfortable. So she thinks of the only thing that she can do. And she grabs her cell phone that Earth First had provided her, and they had also provided her with a list of news station phone numbers to call. And she thought, you know, the whole point of this tree sit is to get attention. We're trying to save the trees and we need to get attention. And this logger is willing to kill a man sitting in one of the trees someone needs to know.

So she starts dialing. After several attempts, she reaches the answering machine of one of them, and she left a frantic message detailing exactly what was going on. After this, the fight between them and the loggers continued for 12 days before they headed to another tree that wasn't too far away and decided to cut that one down instead. The problem was that they were cutting in the direction of where Julia and almond were sitting. So it wasn't long before the tree came crashing towards them

and it almost completely knocked Julia out of the tree. At this point, it was very clear that this job of trying to protect Luna was going to be a very dangerous one. And each day that she was in the tree, she was potentially risking her life. These loggers were angry and they were annoyed and they clearly had total disregard for her safety. For Julia, she decided to look at this situation with a different perspective. She wanted to see what the Pacific loggers saw. She's like, okay, why do they hate me so much? Yes, this is how they make money. But why do they have no regard for my safety? And she decided, you know, they think I'm just a hippie.

They think I'm a tree hugger. They think that I'm the person that's standing in the way of them doing their job and making money to support their families. So she decided that she's going to try and make friends with them. It's like, how can I start talking to them? How can I get on their good side? Yeah, get on their good side. How can they see that I'm actually a person that's standing here?

So she starts talking to them. She starts trying to relate to them. She's asking about their families, their friends, things like that. And at one point, in a little baggy, she lowers down some granola. to eat because she's like, you know, you're probably hungry. Here's a snack. I have food up here. She lowers that down. And then inside of it, she lowers a photo of her that she had taken very recently, just a couple weeks back on her birthday. And she was wearing a silk suit and heels. She was all dolled up, dressed to the nines, looking very different than she does in this tree right now.

And she's kind of like, here, look, I'm not like this hippie, lives in the forest, lives off the land person. I just don't believe in what you're doing. She's humanizing herself to them because then it's kind of like maybe they would think twice about cutting down a tree that has hurt in it versus just someone that's blocking, like you said, their way of life. You know, it's like, well, I don't want to cut down Luna because Julia's in it. Exactly. That's exactly what it is.

She starts extending kindness in lots of different ways. And she was religious. So in her own time, she was even praying for them. She's like, I'm praying that they're safe out here. I'm praying that they're well-being. I think it was something that wasn't only for her own safety, but also she was like, I hate these people and I'm harboring a lot of anger towards them. Like, how can I make them a little better for myself too?

And they didn't become friends, but they started joking around a lot. They could call up into the tree and be like, hey, Julia, and she'd be like, hey, you change your mind yet? You still out here? What are we doing today? Like, how long are we going to be out here? you're going to stop yet? And they would just kind of make jokes and poke fun at each other. And it was a little bit. The tensions were east. Okay. But living on the platform was not especially easy.

The platform itself had been falling apart and it was held together in some places with just like duct tape. There was a tarp that was created for the walls of the area, but it didn't hold in heat well. And it didn't do a lot to protect them from windstorms. And this time of year, there were really heavy storms. they had sleet, hail, rain. It was uncomfortable. It was very small. And if Julia wasn't alone in the tree, her privacy was very limited. There were no bathrooms on the platform, and she had to urinate in a jar. And what she would do is she would urinate in a jar, and then she would essentially like spread it over the side and let it drop to the ground. But with the 180 foot fall, I think this is kind of important because it's like, wait, you can't just throw your urine everywhere. You're going to kill the plants.

With this 180-foot fall and with how wet this area was, the acidity of her urine didn't actually harm any of the plants. And it dissipated so much on the fall that it was like barely covering certain areas. Then also, so she doesn't have a bathroom. And so defecating was also done differently. She didn't have a toilet. So she would do that in a bucket with a trash bag, which was then stored inside one of the caves in the tree. I mentioned before it had been struck by lightning. So it had like these cave holes in the tree throughout it.

And she would essentially hide a trash bag of her poop in there and then wait for someone who volunteered to carry it out. Yeah. I mean, the logistics of the level of commitment that she and almond and whoever else tree sat is just really unmatched, you know. Yeah. It's a different way of life up there. And it's definitely not easy. But a big reminder of her of why she was in there and she would be in here, oh, I don't have a bathroom. I don't have a real bed. I don't have walls. And then she would remember the people from Stafford County.

She'd be like, they don't have houses because of this. And her fire was reignited. She's like, I'm up here for a reason. I can deal with these things. And she did grow up poor. So it's not like she came from this lavish lifestyle and then was living in a tree. She lived most of her life on almost nothing. Weeks went by that Julia sat in the tree and eventually Almond did leave and she was alone and the weather was getting more and more difficult to deal with. She hadn't had the proper winter clothes to deal with the weather and she was very cold. Earth First, who had originally been the organization who had asked her to sit in the tree, now wanted her to come down due to liabilities of being there. They never had people tree sit during the winter because of how dangerous it was. And if she was injured during the cause and during her tree sit, that would look really bad on their organization.

But Julia wasn't interested in leaving the trees, especially with all the logging that was going on. She knew that if she left that Luna would be gone. So that wasn't an option for her. And she essentially said, you know, if it's going to look bad on your organization, if I get injured, don't consider me part of your organization. I won't tell people I'm part of it and I'm not part of it. Like, I'll do this myself. She's going rogue. Mm-hmm.

She refused to leave and she's just going to do it on her own. then. One afternoon while she's up there, she was looking out over the forest and she saw a group of men in vests with badges hiking up towards her. And she knew immediately that it was more people who would be attempting to get her down from the tree. And at this time, her friend Shakespeare was also there and saw them arriving as well. As with everyone else who had tried to get her out of the tree to leave, they pretty much demanded her to come down. And again, she refused. These people were guards, and they offered her the chance to leave essentially with no repercussions. They were like, you know what, come down.

We'll give you 24 hours to think about it. But come down within 24 hours and we're not going to rest you. We'll drive you off the property. Just get out. Essentially was their thing. And these guards were actually employed by the lumber company to hang out there and not leave until she left. So they were stuck there as long as she stayed.

They also said, you know, you can come down in 24 hours. We won't arrest you. But we're also cutting off your resupply chain. So any activist that comes up here with supplies for you were arresting, and they're also not getting up to you. They're basically just starving or out. That's exactly what they were doing. So 24 hours came and went, and neither Julia or Shakespeare left the tree, but they did realize at this point that they did have a pretty big problem. With them blocking the resupply, they realized that they didn't have enough food and supplies to last two people for a few weeks. But they would have enough for one person for a few weeks.

So this is where they decided, Shakespeare, you should probably head down because the resources would last Julia longer. And she was the most dedicated to this cause. So she's like, Shakespeare, you should leave. But we got to figure out how you're going to get down without getting arrested. Then the guards offered again to allow them to leave without being arrested, even though the 24 hours had passed. They're like, you guys are still up here. We want to go home. Please leave. We won't arrest you. Come down. So they came up with a plan. And Julia said, If you let Shakespeare get down and you let him get home and he calls me and lets me know that he made it down with no issues, not getting arrested, anything, I'll consider coming down. I'll believe that you won't arrest me if you don't arrest him.

Okay. So they just had to, yeah, prove to her that they would be true to their word. Exactly. So Shakespeare comes down and they were so motivated to get Julia to believe them that they actually not only walked him off the trail, but then drove him in their cars to his house. Yeah, it's like, okay, we've done this. Now let's go. It's like, we'll carry you, we'll feed you, whatever you want. Like, please come down. And I'm sure Julia had no intention. None. At all. At all. Shakespeare calls and she's like, great. Glad you made it. Great. A C in a few weeks.

Yeah. And so they get back and they're like, okay, he's home. You can come down now. And she's like, oh, yeah. Yeah, I changed my mind. Yep. I'm not coming down. And of course, this enraged the guards.

And after that, she was met with threats and yelling. And they were threatening horrible things. They were threatening to rape her, to beat her. They were getting increasingly angry. And the days just continued. She's like, I'm not coming down. You can yell all that stuff from me from 180 feet down on the ground, but essentially, it's not going to change my stance. It's not going to change my stance.

And also, to climb up into the tree was extremely difficult. So she knew that they weren't getting up into the tree either. She's like, I'm staying here. That also wasn't a good answer for them. So they began harassing her. They were shining floodlights throughout the night to keep her awake. So it was never dark. They had bugles and they had foghorns and they would use them all night depriving her of any sleep at all. They would be yelling profanities at her. They'd be screaming. me at her to come down. They were basically trying to get her to be so tired and worn out that she would just give up. Yeah, like they're trying mental tactics now. It was exactly that. But Julia wasn't being moved by it. She stood her ground and she's like, I'm not leaving until Luna is saved. But the guards

weren't Julia's only challenge. With only a few layers of wool clothing and the weather getting worse and worse, she was getting really cold. And she only had a lightweight sleeping bag and she was really beginning to feel the effects of it. Her body was numb and to keep proper circulation in her limbs she had to climb around the tree and keep herself moving. But it was wet, it was cold, it was extremely windy up there. And she climbed barefoot. She didn't feel like she could climb well with shoes on. And it was part of she felt like she needed to feel the grooves in the tree with her feet and to be able to safely maneuver around. So she climbed barefoot and eventually she did suffer from frostbite in her toes. So she didn't have shoes at all? She had shoes. She just

didn't climb in them. Oh, okay. Yeah. It ended up taking her weeks to fully recover, and she would spend a lot of her time wrapping her feet in other clothing and her sleeping bag, like rubbing them a lot. And she did recover, and her frostbite was gone, but it took several weeks for that to happen. Now, during this whole time, she stayed in communication with news outlets informing them exactly what was happening. She had a video camera up there, so she would video any instances that she could, including one time there was a helicopter that flew way too close to Luna. And helicopters are really strong, like, they create really strong wind speeds. So there's actually a law that you're not allowed to get within 200 feet of trees, and they were getting much closer than that. Because of this,

the branches were blowing wildly, and they were almost throwing her off her balance, and she almost fill out of the tree entirely. Was the helicopter dispatched by the logging company? Definitely. Okay. I just wanted to make sure. I thought I knew the answer. I just wanted to make sure. This is definitely another attempt. It was a scare tactic, essentially. It was to make her uncomfortable. And, you know, she was struggling at this point. She was exhausted. She hadn't slept in days. The storms that were happening were unrelenting. There were the tactics of the guards and the helicopter. And also, she had no supplies. No one had been able to get up to her. So she was alone. And she was running out supplies. There were other activists who had been trying to resupply, but they failed over and over and

over again. And of course, she's in radio communication with them. So she, she's getting drained. She's seeing that resupplies aren't happening. She's in this weather. It's a rough time. And eventually, just as Julia was ready to give up and come down from the tree, she saw in the distance a group of 20 activists approaching the tree. Next, over the radio, she heard the codes, meaning that they were close and about to perform a resupply. And this was the first time that they had given her this code in all the attempts. So she's like, it's happening. She has hope here.

They're coming. So she knew that she needed to be ready and she also knew that she needed to distract the guards. So out of view of the guards, she lowered the rope that she would use halfway down the tree. And this would be the rope that the supplies would be attached to. She then started singing to distract the cards from any noise. is from the incoming group. She was singing songs that they were used to, so it was kind of like,

oh, the crazy hippie is singing in the tree again. Nothing to pay any attention to. But eventually, Shakespeare emerged from the bushes and announced his presence to the guards. Then there were 19 more activists that came out of the woods. Each one had what looked like a supply bag, but not everyone had supplies. Some of them just had mock bags to confuse the guards

so they wouldn't know which person to stop. This is so well thought out. It's organized. They know. And one of the activists called out 23, which was the code to drop the rope so he could attach the supplies. Julia did it and they hooked it quickly. One of the guards dived trying to grab the bag.

But before he could get to it, Julia pulled it up. Again, she lowered the rope when they weren't paying attention and she got another bag into the tree of supplies. This was finally a successful resupply. She had new food and batteries. and a video camera, and she had seen an activist from Earth's First. So Earth First had decided to come back. Be like, you know, you're still here.

You're dedicated. We're behind you. We're helping you out. Yeah. So after this, she was feeling good. She's like, I am revived. My hope is here. I'm ready to fight.

She's like, they just did all this for me. I can hang out longer. Now, two days after this, the storms had been so unrelenting and so difficult that the security guards actually had to leave their posts because it was too dangerous for them to be out there. The storms continued to rage. They brought hail, sleet, rain, wind speeds up to 70 miles per hour, and there were times that Julia spent questioning how long she could stay up there and debating on giving up. But every time she thought that she was done and she was ready to come down, there was an outpouring of support that would arrive again, which would fuel her need to continue the fight.

Eventually, Julia reached a record of tree sitting. The world record was 90 days, and she was well over 100 days at this point. I was just about to ask how much time has lapsed. Forever. She's been here for so long. And this was when the media really started to take notice of her. Like, you just broke a record. What's really going on?

So suddenly, news stations were calling and asking for interviews. They wanted to know about her life. They were reporting on her time in the tree and the details of her living there. Now, while some media outlets genuinely wanted to know what she was doing, her cause, others used the interview to tear her down. and accuse her of trespassing, of being a nuisance, just stopping the economy because some people viewed the logging company as like an important economic resource. And some were just trying to get a rise out of her. But there were other things that were hard to combat, especially when

Julia entered a debate with the president of the Pacific Lumber Company on CNN. And he stated that she should come down from the tree because she was taking up space wildlife would use to nest in. She's like, excuse me? You're cutting the tree down. Exactly. And that was her response. She's like, there is a bright blue mark on this tree that has labeled this as a tree that you are cutting down. I'm not taking up a lot of wildlife's nesting location. Yeah.

When you're removing the nesting location of many, many, many species. Yeah. So some of these fights for her were like, excuse me, like I'm fighting pretty much dumbness with knowledge right now. Yeah, it doesn't. It's, what's the phrase? You can't argue with stupid. Yeah.

Not to say that that person and some of what they were doing is stupid. It's just that specific argument is, makes, it's invalid. Right. But with this, her cause and Julia herself became huge news across the nation. She had become the spokesperson for the tree, and she was getting attention from people everywhere. And by the spring of that year, security guards had given up completely, and people are now free to often visit her at the tree. And at one point, a band member from the Grateful Dead even came, and they had this big party celebrating at the base of Luna where they played music, they had

food, and were just showing support for Julia. Julia, of course, didn't come down. She had promised that she was not coming down until Luna was saved, but she celebrated up on the platform. Celebrities were becoming interested in her cause as well and agreed with her cause. She even had Woody Harrelson climb into the tree and actually spend the night on the platform with Julia. The night, a single night. A single night. He's like, you know, this isn't exactly. And she writes in her book, too, she's like, he wasn't really a morning person, but he appreciated and understood the cause and really loved the cause, but it just wasn't where he wanted to be, essentially. Yeah, well, I mean, the attention that he would draw from that or he did draw from that must have been huge huge for her

cause yeah absolutely and just having these people care about it people who have big voices and people who have big reach is such an important part the whole point is getting the word out and making people care so she had been in the tree for a long time now and with this extra time julia spent educating herself about the environment in the area, about what she was fighting for, because she really went in and she was like, this is magical, you can't cut these trees down. And now she was up there, and she wanted to be able to speak knowledgeably about it. So she's like, I want to know about all the plants here. I want to know why they're good for the environment. I want to know exactly the devastation that the lumber companies are causing. So I have a valid argument. Throughout her time there,

she did receive different awards and was awarded an honorary doctorate in Humanities from a California-based college. By August 1998, Julia was nominated by Good Housekeeping as one of the most admired people in America. Julia had not only been speaking to news outlets, but she also began speaking to government officials and publicly speaking against government agreements and proposals on environmental issues. A recent proposal, the Headwaters Agreement, had agreed to preserve a portion of the forest. but it neglected to protect a large majority of it, guaranteeing the extinction of several endangered species. Julia spent her time actively highlighting the issues with the proposal

and speaking out against it. Even though Julia was living in a tree, she was spending most of her time on computers, on phones, researching things. She was constantly using her voice to fight against not only the protection of Luna, but also the protection of other trees in the area as well. She was fighting to protect what Luna represented. Exactly.

She knew that this was so much bigger than Luna, but Luna was the symbol of it all. And eventually, she began communicating directly with the president of the lumber company, who refused to negotiate or save the areas around Luna. But this was a huge step because she had never actually been able to talk to him directly ever before, but she had finally gotten his attention. More protests continued throughout the forest, and during this time, another activist was killed when a logger cut a tree down knowing there were people that it would fall around. During this, an activist was crushed in the process, and this sparked outrage and further protests and media coverage.

Eventually, the communications between John Campbell, who was one of the presidents of the lumber company, and Julia became much more frequent. They started discussing their purine of views on the phone. They weren't seeing eye-to-eye, but they were having conversations. John had seen this company as an economic importance. That was good for the community. And Julia saw this as not a sustainable way to support not only jobs, but the forest. They weren't seeing eye to eye, but they started getting into more personal conversations. And they actually began to get to know each other. She got to know John Campbell about his life, his family. They even talked about vacations. She kind of went into this with another, I want to know who you are. I want you to like me as a person. So we can find some comments. common ground. During these conversations, he proposed meeting in person and he would come to the bottom of the hill where Luna stood and she could meet him down there and he promised that Luna would be safe while she was out of the tree. Now, of course, she did not agree to this. She said no. I have decided that I am not ever leaving Luna until she's protected, so I can't meet you there. So he decided that

he would come to Luna. At this point, Julia had been sitting atop of Luna for over a year. When John Campbell arrived, he brought a six-pack of Pepsi as a gift for Julia, and they discussed how to preserve her. John Campbell agreed that he would allow her to stand in return of Julia coming down. He promised to put a plaque up stating that she was preserved, which Julia agreed was a fantastic start, but she did have reservations about it. If none of the other trees that were directly around Luna were preserved, the area would still be subject to a landslide, and eventually Luna would fall anyway. So she asked if they could preserve 200 feet surrounding the tree. And a big reason why she just asked for 200 feet was because they had already logged so much around

that there really wasn't much left in these years. So 200 feet was actually like preserving a few trees, some shrub, things that would actually hold the soil in place. So he agreed. And he said that he would come back and write up a formal agreement. Meanwhile, while all this was going on, clear cutting continued. but John Campbell came back with further negotiations toward the protections of Luna. While he agreed to protect Luna and 200 feet of land around her, there were trees that were already cut down that were in the path of the area that he was agreeing to protect,

and he wanted rights to those trees. He's like, we already cut them down. I want the money from them. For Julia, this was kind of a hard decision because she knew the huge environmental purpose of trees that had been cut down or had died. and these trees who had died and were decaying were really important for putting nutrients back into the soil, for other plant life to grow and thrive after. But on the other end of this, she knew that she had to make some sacrifices and that an agreement had to be made.

So very reluctantly, she agreed to the conditions. Again, John Campbell went back to have the agreement written up, and Julia also enlisted the help of other activists and lawyers who could review it, make sure there were no loopholes or conditions that she didn't agree to. There was wording that needed to be precise, down to even how the already cut down logs were removed to ensure that there would be no damage to the remaining area. Well, she had gotten so far. The last thing you want is to have some wording in the final agreement that ruins everything. Ruin everything.

And she had these good lawyers that were really looking at over and they'd be like, this word I don't like. This word I don't like. And they were nitpicking at it to make sure that it was the best that it could be. But eventually the agreement reached a standstill. And it was for a totally different reason. And it was because other members that had say in the Pacific Lumber Company didn't feel comfortable signing the agreement because they wanted to implement rules to what Julia was allowed to say

after the agreement was met. They essentially did not want her to be allowed to publicly say anything bad about the company. And they also wanted her to kind of praise their efforts in conserving the land. Oh my God. They wanted her to sell out. Essentially, they wanted her to sell out. And they also wanted to take her freedom of speech away because they wrote all these conditions and rules that would affect her freedom of speech throughout the rest of her life and would affect what she could do in the area anywhere that Pacific Lumber owned in the future, including Redwood's areas, that she was never allowed to protest or do anything again. Well, and it seems like they're trying to take away her passion for advocacy to some degree. They were like, she's a threat. She can say bad things about us. She can get, look how many people she's gotten against us already. We can't sign over this agreement and then have her fight for something else that we're doing. Right. So Julia couldn't agree to this. She didn't want any

limitations on her ability to do things later in life. And she didn't want to sign something taking away her own freedom of speech. She would always want to advocate. Kate for the Redwoods. And although she would happily talk about the agreement that they got to, and she wasn't going to go out there and talk super badly about them reaching an agreement, she wasn't going to praise them for being environmentally friendly. And she wasn't going to condone further destruction that they would definitely commit in the future. And while these had originally been private conversations, the Pacific Lumber Company decided to release versions of their conversation, stating that Julia was being unreasonable, that she

wouldn't agree to anything and that they were trying to resolve the issue. Julia, who had been hoping to keep this whole thing private, she decided to hold a press conference after that. And she wanted to confront their allegations and the lies of what they were spreading about her. And this created a large outpour of support towards her. And people really rallied around her at the press conference. And this sparked a huge audience and it gained attention of the senator at the time. And after the senator heard what was going on, they really pushed the Pacific lumber company to sign a contract. Like, you got to do this. Like, you're in the spotlight.

We're going to get involved if you don't. The pressure's on. The gloves are off. Enough's enough. Exactly. 738 days after Julia Hill first began her treasonit on Luna on December 19th, 1999, an agreement was signed. Luna, along with a 200-foot buffer zone around her, was. officially protected forever.

What an accomplishment. That is such an accomplishment. One, I mean, she definitely had help and support from so many different organizations and things like that, but it was one person who was like, I'm not giving up that that sparked other people to not want to give up. Right. Well, it was she set off a chain of events that, yes, without the help and support of all those other people and organizations probably wouldn't have happened.

but you could also say none of that would have happened without her. Exactly. And, you know, like you said in the beginning, it's just one person with no experience, just a passion and a heart for a cause, and look what she did. It's amazing. It's inspiring. It's so inspiring. It's like if you think, kind of why I wrote like the intro, it's like if you think you

don't have a voice and you can't do something, look at people like this who went into something that they cared about with no knowledge, no experience. just a passion for what was going on and knowing that what was happening was wrong. And the drive to commit to it and the drive to obtain knowledge. Like you said, yeah, I have a passion for it, but I need to know everything there is to know about this. So I can speak with knowledge behind me about this issue. And I can make a real impact and people will listen to me because there's one thing to be said about and I hate, you know, saying the term, a crazy hippie who,

just as like, well, I, you know, I love the earth and you should too. That is obviously inspiring to some degree, but there's an added layer of, hmm, let me really listen to what you have to say if they're backing it up with a lot of things that you can't argue with, you know, with knowledge from this is why I have a passion. This is why it's important. Not just because I feel this way. It's so much harder to argue as someone who presents you with facts. If you're like two plus two is four. In this, is how I know the answer. And someone else is like, no, it's six. Like, how do you get that? Show me your work. And when I prove you wrong, you have no argument. Right. So she obviously so exciting, super successful campaign, 738 days. You know, that's a very, very long time to live in a

tree. She did leave the tree. She got out. She went back to her life. Almost one year later in November of 2000, news broke out that Luna had been vandalized. An unknown person used a chainsaw to cut 32 inches deep and 19 feet around the base of the tree. Oh my God. This was just less than half of the circumference of the entire tree. It was very clear that someone had attempted to cut it down but had stopped, maybe. For unknown reasons, you know, maybe they realized that this was much harder than they anticipated. Or maybe someone was coming.

Who knows? Because they weren't caught in the act, but they cut almost halfway through her trunk. At the news of the tragedy, top arborists in the area, engineers and biologists began implementing a plan to try and save Luna. There were representatives from the Pacific Lumber Company, sanctuary forest, and the California Department of Forestry, who worked late into the night to try and save her. So even the Pacific Lumber Company is like, we've gone too far to preserve her. Like we got to. Yeah, it's like, we just went through hell, okay? This tree is not falling.

And maybe it was also. something to be like, we weren't part of this. Like, we'll help you. I think it was a little bit to save face. Yeah, for sure. Definitely. Their plan for what they did is they put up metal braces that were basically put in place to stop the tree from snapping and toppling over in high wind speeds. Now that had a cut halfway through the base, it wasn't balanced anymore. And over the following few months, there were cables that were installed that were also to help

Luna from falling. When they assessed the damage that was really done to Luna, it was estimated that she would begin to die, starting from the top of the tree. So they expected to see the green going away, branches starting to die off, and it was believed that in two to five years, she would be gone completely. But people hoped that stabilizing her would help to extend that timeline. Some dieback did occur at the tip of the tree, but there was not nearly as much as they had been expecting. It has been over 20 years since she was attacked, but she is still alive, and every year she shows signs of new growth. What a resilient tree. I mean, at over a thousand years old, you've seen some shit.

Yeah, you've been through some shit. You're not letting this get you down, especially when you have a whole army force behind you keeping you standing. I mean, she's been through fires, lightning. Now she's been half cut down, and she's still standing through time. I did want to mention because we've been talking about her so much, there is no public access to Luna. For obvious reasons, I'm sure. For obvious reasons, you cannot go hike out to Luna, but she does stand tall and proud near the town of Stafford, California, and you can view her from afar from Highway 101. So she is so tall you can see her from the highway, so you can look at her from afar.

Admire from afar. Yeah. I did want to quote a section of Julia's book because I just thought it was a beautiful way. to end how important Luna is. And in Julia Butterfly Hills book, The Legacy of Luna, she wrote, Luna stands as a symbol, a symbol for all the old growth forests

that are smashing into the ground, into oblivion, into extinction every day. Luna stands for hope and the love that will always win over hate. Luna reminds us that the hope for this beautiful, sacred planet that gives us life, and thus hope for our humanity lies in our ability to transform

the greatest obstacles and challenges into strength, endurance, commitment, and love. She continues on to say, yes, symbols can be attacked, but what they stand for can never be destroyed. The assault on Luna is an assault on what so many people in this world hold sacred and dear. But instead of weakening or destroying us, it has only served to make our resolve stronger. What a story. What a story. And what is she up to now? She is still out there. She is still advocating for the Redwoods Forest.

And she actually, if you go to sanctuary forest.org, she has a whole organization that she has put together to continue the fight to save the Redwoods. And if you would like to join the worldwide efforts to assure Luna's well-being, you can contribute to the Sanctuary Forest Conservation, easement endowment fund at sanctuary forest.org. Wow. I got to look up a picture of her. There's pictures, right? I'm sure. on my book. Oh, let me see. Wow. Look at her. Yeah. Look at her bare feet. Bare feet and all climbing. Bare feet climbing. And she wrote in her book too, she's like, I gained all these muscles on my hands and my feet that would like help me climb. And I'm like, I can't even picture muscles on my hand and my feet. But I'm sure. Wow. That was great. It was definitely inspiring. I had a feeling. I didn't get sad one time. Well, okay, a little bit. Especially,

the person, whoever is responsible, person or people responsible for that attack on Luna. I just kind of wonder what drives someone to do that, especially after such a publicized effort to protect and save her. Not only the efforts of Julia, but so many other people and how long there was debates and going back and forth about her protections and the protections for the area surrounding her. And then I would imagine it's some something. sort of hate against, you know, the movement in general. It has to be because there were so much time, dedication, effort, and issues that people solved and resolved, like, through this whole movement

to try and take away all of that fight in a moment. It's just like, you go and cut this tree down and then what was the purpose of 738 days in a tree and you just cut her down when no one's looking? And all of the efforts that went in behind that 738 day sit and that person who lost their life, like, involved in all that. It's just, yeah, I don't understand. And I'm glad that that was kind of like an isolated incident. And so far, nothing else has happened. And hopefully it never does. Yeah.

And one good thing, or lots of good things that arise from this episode. But now, Luna has actually started. regrowing around and healing around her trunk where she was cut and there are areas of her trunk that are regenerating over itself and healing itself. Wow. Okay. So are the cable still there? Like the stabilizing? Yeah. There are still some that are there and holding her together, but she has begun healing and every year she seems to be getting stronger and stronger, which is very exciting. That is so cool. Yeah. Well, thank you for sharing such a special episode and kind of bringing us up a little bit.

Yeah. All right. I think that's it. We've been at this. This is a long one. I was going to say anything else. I don't know if I have anything else in me. Okay.

Well, thank you everyone so much for joining us again. We look forward to seeing you next week. In the meantime, enjoy the view. But watch you're back. Goodbye. Bye. Thank you for joining us again this week. If you have a trail tale, you'd like to show.

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