From Cyber Books to Moses Mania, the Stories We’ve Brought You During the Year Have Had Some Surprising Developments : After a Year, She’s Still Up a Tree

Julia “Butterfly” Hill ends the year just the way she began it: high up in a 1,000-year-old tree.

Hill, a 24-year-old environmental activist, clambered up the ancient Northern California redwood on Dec. 10, 1997, and pledged to stay put until the Pacific Lumber Co. promised not to cut the tree down.

Company officials said nothing doing and continue to log around her.

Hill doesn’t mind that she has had to use a bucket for a toilet, spend most of her days enveloped in fog, and settle down for the night in a damp sleeping bag. Using mail and cell phones, she keeps in touch with her growing international circle of supporters, which has included schoolchildren writing letters asking Vice President Al Gore to intervene.

And this month, the holidays came to Hill. Supporters gathered some 30 flashing beacons that she placed among the tree’s branches, a twinkling display that, she is told, can been seen from Highway 101 near Eureka. It’s a beacon of hope, she says.

“The holiday season for people is a time of giving thanks and sharing gifts,” she added by phone from her 6-by-8-foot platform perch. “The greatest gift of all that’s been given is the gift of life. For me [the holidays are] just a continuation of what I try to do every day.”