Into the Woods: Where Virgin Sequoias Have Reapers and Savers at Loggerheads : Conservation: A lumber company and redwood protectors are near war over whether some of oldest trees in the world should fall.

In the pre-dawn darkness, we stumble along the gravel road leading into Pacific Lumber Co.’s private forest. We are trespassers in the most political woods in California. Environmentalists and the timber industry are near war over Headwaters Forest.

It is a five-mile hike to where some of the thickest redwood stands are, and I’m no hiker. I’ve already managed to lose my glasses; the trees are beginning to play tricks on me: They’re posing as people.

“Listen,” whispers Darryl Cherney, an Earth First! activist. Besides him, the other members of our group are guides Todd Swarthout and Raven (no last name, please). Cherney thinks he’s heard a security guard. He’s been caught on Pacific Lumber land before and has been ordered by a court to keep out.

But it’s just a deer crossing behind us. The time is 5:30 a.m.

I’m breaking the law because I want to see Headwaters firsthand, and Pacific Lumber never returned my phone calls asking if company officials would be my guide. But my desire to see the virgin redwoods is not special. Swarthout informs me that he takes groups into the redwood forest about twice a month. And they aren’t all environmental activists.

The day before our trip, he tells me, a group of six prominent Californians trespassed into Headwaters. Their guide wouldn’t disclose much about them, only saying that some were businessmen and lawyers. He hinted to Swarthout that they might help environmentalists in their efforts to save Headwaters. Indeed, the timber industry and environmentalists agreed Thursday on a two-year moratorium on logging Headwaters.

The forest is so dense that even at noon only a shaft or two of sunlight reaches its floor. From the sword ferns to the tufts on the leaves, everything is a gentle yellow-green. The scene resembles a Maurice Sendak drawing. There are no signs, no roads, no paths.

We mostly wade through massive clumps of ferns, occasionally walking on fallen tree trunks. The redwoods are colossal--250 feet high, with trunks the size of a Volkswagen Beetle.

Owned by Pacific Lumber Co., these trees are located in a 3,000-acre stretch of Humboldt County timberland that includes some of the oldest virgin sequoias in the world. Charles Hurwitz, chief executive officer of Pacific Lumber, wants to log some of them to pay down his company’s debt. Cherney demands that no tree be axed.

The fight is currently being waged in the form of three initiatives. The timber industry is collecting signatures for its measure, which would allow loggers to regulate their own practices. The other two initiatives are sponsored by environmentalists. They would, among other things, clear the way to buy Headwaters from Pacific Lumber.

Earth First! activists, among the most radical of environmentalists, have their own tactics to keep chain saws out of Headwaters: tree sit-ins and tampering with bulldozers.

Environmentalists have been fighting Pacific Lumber since 1986, when the company was taken over by the Maxxam Group, private investors led by Hurwitz. After the company was taken over by the private group, Pacific Lumber more than doubled its tree-cutting, partly to pay down the debt, mostly junk bonds, that the new owners took on to buy the company.

In an interview last summer, Hurwitz defended his management of the land and company. “There’s more timber than the board of directors realized, so we (could cut more board feet and not violate) modern-day standards.” He wants to log about a fifth of the redwoods, or 565 acres, in Headwaters.

Meanwhile, company officials say the increased cutting won’t deplete any redwood stands. Quite the contrary: They claim to be replacing the forest by planting five trees for every one felled.

Sitting on the forest floor, I try to imagine where I am in Headwaters. I hear a muffled hum above. It’s an airplane. But I can barely see its tracks through the tree tops.

While hiking in, there was talk about how an experienced hiker got lost in Headwaters for a few days. Should that happen to me, I was instructed, I should look for a stream and follow it into town. I didn’t confess how unreliable my sense of direction is. I vowed to myself to stay near our guide.

Suddenly, Cherney decides he wants to hike deeper into the forest. I want to go, too. I want to see if there really are trees that have trunks the size of a two-car garage. But my blistered feet will not take me.

Upon Cherney’s return, we decide to hike out of the forest before it gets dark. It’s about 3 p.m. I’m not looking forward to the trek. In the forest, we are safe from security guards. Once outside, we are easy targets.

An hour later, as we leave Headwaters, I stop to look back. Some of these trees were here when Jesus was preaching. As the setting sun turns the sky an ashen rose, I wonder how many of them will make it to the year 2000.