Wood Nymph

In December 1999, after two years of tree-sitting, 25-year-old Julia Hill climbed down from her adopted redwood, Luna, one of the last of the ancient-growth redwoods in Northern California. Hill had taken the environmentalist name “Butterfly” before going up the tree, just as other tree activists had taken “Shakespeare,” “Almond” and “Gypsy.” For two years, the feet of this woman, a model in high school and the daughter of an itinerant Southern preacher, did not touch the Earth. In fact, one of the treetop winters was the record cold and wet El Nin~o, and the other was the notorious La Nin~a.

This was one of the memorable acts of American civil disobedience. As a result of Hill’s love for this tree and the ancient forests, Luna is still standing. The area where it salutes the sky is otherwise clear-cut, and other tracts are being clear-cut right now.

Anyone with profound feelings and loves is potentially an outlaw in a consumerist society. Hill was smeared as an eco-outlaw and a terrorist, and more by the public-relations arm of the greed-driven Maxxam Corp. While the name-calling continued, dangerously close helicopters blasted 300-mph winds against Hill’s tiny margin of safety at 180 feet above the forest floor. When Nobel Prizes are given for bravery and the courage to make honorable environmental acts, Hill should be one of the first nominees. Good Housekeeping magazine named Hill its woman of the year during her tree-sit. Something is right somewhere.

Hill’s home above the forest floor was 20 feet below Luna’s peak. The 1,000-year-old redwood stands on a steep hill above the Inferno-like carnage of Maxxam Lumber’s clear-cutting of the forest. Hill’s home was a 7-foot platform of boards, duct tape and material taken from a windsurfer sail. In winds, snow, storms and rains, the platform would move like a roller coaster, blowing and rolling in all directions and whipping like a snake. Sometimes even sunny days at treetop level were bitter cold, cold enough to cause serious, slow-healing frostbite to Hill.

“Legacy of Luna,” Hill’s account of her time in the tree, is a page-turner, written in a direct, simple style. It has been spared the commercial tweaking that often befalls pop books, and Hill’s naive poems are sprinkled throughout. It moves rapidly, with the intelligence and energy of the adventure being told. Detective fiction fans will find “Legacy of Luna” speeds as rapidly as an Elmore Leonard novel. Other readers will see it zap by with the sensory clarity of Kerouac’s “On the Road.”

The feelings and knowledge Hill writes of come from the tree in a winter storm--and not from pretense or artfulness; this is religious experience and respect for life speaking. This book is recounted by a real flesh-and-blood hero. There is not much that is Aquarian in it. Thoreau said that one must stand up to live before one sits down to write. Hill stood up on a bare branch at the top of an old-growth redwood choking for breathable air while felled trees and the scruff of huge lopped branches around the base of her “friend” were sprayed with diesel fuel and napalm (yes, napalm), torched and burned to black, lifeless cinders. The noxious smoke at the top of the tree made breathing nearly impossible.

Hill writes a sunny description of a day when Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart showed up with musicians and dancers at the base of the tree to celebrate the first year of her sit, and Hill joined in dance and song with them from her treetop. In a cameo appearance, actor-activist Woody Harrelson pays a grumpy and sleepless overnight visit to Hill and Luna. In another, Joan Baez and Bonnie Raitt spend a day in the tree. Other tree-sitting activists and support teams are brought in as voices through Hill’s apt characterizations of them. We meet Shakespeare, Almond and Orange in passing. We hear about the tragic death, or murder, of David “Gypsy” Chain, another activist who was killed by a falling tree while trying to block the logging of redwoods on Pacific Lumber Co. land.

Hill’s descriptions of nature observed from atop Luna are vivid and could be longer. The flying squirrels glide in and gnaw through plastic bucket lids, there are flighty and shadowy mice in the treetops, hummingbirds zoom through and make their diving calls. This part could be expanded into a natural history book or perhaps a great young person’s book about the reality of a tree’s life and its mosses and worts and attendant creatures and plants.

Supporting the book is a backbone of useful information. The story of Hill’s growing environmental awareness is given in a non-preachy and clarifying account of the recent destruction of California’s redwood forests. Beginning with no media experience and a modest, stubborn and flexible character, Hill, while on the tree-sit, becomes a leading voice of the movement, mostly by cell phone and letters and radio interviews via phone. She did not expect this role, but she found her gift for it. Her calm acceptance of the lies that were laid against her, and her patience with bitter, angry and scheming enemies is one of her triumphs and a jewel in this document of environmental and human decency.

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In this new century with its disconnection between inspiration and taking action, “Legacy of Luna” is the account of a woman pursuing her life in line with the intensity of her beliefs and feelings. Meanwhile, theaters show gladiators and psychopaths chopping each other into bloody chunks, accompanied by operatic soundtracks. Do we want a great adventure to give meaning to our lives and to our children? Hill, Rachel Carson and Margaret Sanger are there right beside John Muir.

In a horrific tree-shattering storm, Hill feels Luna flailing in the wind and listens to her, and learns that she must allow herself to bend and blow as the trees do or she’ll be smashed on the Earth below. “I couldn’t have realized any of this without having been broken emotionally and spiritually and mentally and emotionally. I had to be pummeled by mankind, I had to be pummeled by Mother Nature, I had to be broken till I saw no hope, until I went crazy, until I finally let go. Only then could I be filled back up with who I am meant to be. Only then could I become my higher self.”

“Legacy of Luna” is a book to read and then to loan to others, an inspiring, great true tale that gives us the opportunity to arm ourselves with understanding and then to use our voices to act in support.