Before Greta Thunberg there was another environmental activist who catalyzed the world’s attention on important environmental causes: Julia Butterfly Hill.
The very young American activist, born on February 18, 1974 in Missouri, in December 1997 he climbed a thousand-year-old Californian redwood named “Luna” 61 meters high to prevent the logging of it and the surrounding Headwaters forest by the logging company Pacific Lumber. The sit-in turned out to be longer than expected: in fact, Julia lived on the tree for 738 daystherefore for about two years. She hit the ground running on October 18, 1999, when she and her group of activists managed to reach an agreement with the company that wanted to eradicate the entire redwood park.
Hill attracted the attention of the American and even European media, furthering his aim of raising public awareness of forests. A peaceful yet iconic protest, which remained one of a kind and lasting.
Julia Hill’s childhood: how she got to the redwood forests
Julia Hill was used to moving around from an early age camper every month, because his father was an itinerant carpenter. However, this did not displease her at all, as she said in many interviews, because it allowed her to see natural places of rare beauty unknown to many of her peers. During a hike in 1981, a butterfly it landed on her finger and stayed with her for hours. Since that day, his nickname became “Butterfly“.
When Hill was about 12 years old, she settled with her family in Arkansas, where she graduated from high school and began working as a waitress in some clubs in the area. In August 1996, however, while he was driving a car, he was victim of a very serious car accident: the car behind them in fact hit her so violently that the girl was thrown out of the window, violently hitting her skull and suffering several serious injuries and fractures. The recovery was slow, and Julia remained in intensive care for a year before he could talk and walk again.
That terrible accident gave her a lot of time to think, as she stated in some interviews:
As I recovered, I realized that my entire life had been out of balance: I had graduated from high school at 16 and had worked tirelessly ever since, first as a waitress, then as a restaurant manager. I was obsessed with my career, success and material things.
The accident made me understand the importance of the moment and to do everything possible to have a positive impact on the future. The steering wheel in my head, both figuratively and literally, has guided me in a new direction in my life.
After the accident: Julia approaches (and climbs) the redwoods
Precisely following this dramatic event Hill embarked on a spiritual journey that brought her closer to nature, which had been the protagonist throughout her childhood. In fact, during her months in bed, she often thought about those nature trips with her family, and how much she missed all that beauty. Getting closer to nature, once she left the hospital she got involved with environmental causes in the Californian county of Humboldt, where she had returned through some old contacts to participate in a raising funds to save the redwood forests by Pacific Lumber Co. loggers.
But the turning point for her came when the Stafford community – which in December ’96 had been the victim of a disastrous landslide due to the deforestation of the aforementioned company – the churches of climb one of the trees in the forest threatened by loggers in protest. At the time, Hill was not affiliated with any environmental organization, but she was pleased to have been chosen for the cause, and so began her first campaign. civil disobedience. The news of the “girl in the tree” it circulated quickly, and some American environmental organizations and local volunteers decided to support it.
Then came dusk on December 10, 1997, the day the activist got on a thousand-year-old redwood. The tree, known as “the Stafford giant” (61 meters high) was renamed on that occasion: while Julia was climbing that gigantic trunk the moon was rising, and so the activists renamed it “Moon“.
Hill took about 7 hours to reach the topand when she got there she was truly exhausted. Then she unraveled her harness and looked for a crouching place to rest, still firmly attached to the ropes. The next day, in broad daylight, he made two wooden platforms measuring 1.8 x 1.2 meters on which he would live for the next two years (but he didn’t know it yet!).
Life in the redwood
There are many questions that come to mind in an extreme life situation like this: but how did Hill eat, sleep, move, wash himself, and carry out his needs?
The food it was the “simplest” part, so to speak: using the ropeshoisted survival supplies brought to her by support activists whenever possible. They were not exactly appetizing supplies, but for Julia it was the least of the problems not to enjoy lavish meals.
Sleeping wasn’t easy at all: In fact, Julia had no real place to sleep or rest, other than the platform she had built for herself, on which there was no bed. And if it was difficult to sleep, it was also difficult to move during the day, given the limited space. Sometimes, when she had enough energy, she climbed the branches, as witnessed by some photographers who visited her.
Maintaining a decent level of hygiene was complicated, as there was no running water, so she washed herself improvisedly (with towels that the activists in the tree sent to her). But above all, it was complicated to manage them physiological needs: the activist had to pee in a bottle which he then lowered to be emptied, and the same went for the feces, which were collected in bags (the same went for menstrual hygiene devices) and lowered to be thrown by the activists.
The whole situation called for a spirit of adaptation and resistance not by many: even the bad weatherIn fact, they put Hill’s stay in the tree to the test, with rain, strong winds (among the worst were those at 64 km/h caused by El Niño) and cold. To stay warm inside the “tent” that had been created on the platform, he wrapped himself in a heavy sleeping bagleaving only a small space to breathe.
It was certainly among the most difficult things the loneliness felt by the activist: Julia in fact communicated with the outside only through one portable radio and sometimes she exchanged messages with the activists who remained on the ground, but as she said once she got off the ground, very often the suffering of being away from family and friends was very strong.
As if the situation wasn’t stressful enough, there was also a presence of security guards from the lumberjack company who tried to intimidate she and the other activists who remained on the ground.
In those two years Julia Hill learned several survival techniques, and did very unusual things: she used gods solar powered cell phones to participate in radio interviews, he became a tree correspondent for a cable television show and it even hosted television crews to raise awareness among people about the destruction of ancient trees.
What happened to the tree after Julia came down
Those 738 days Julia Butterfly Hill often wondered if her actions would lead to a positive outcome, and finally, in 1999 the Pacific Lumber Company opened a dialogue with activists and agreed not to uproot either Luna or the trees within a 61 meter buffer zone. In exchange, however, Hill would have to abandon the tree, and the $50,000 that she and other activists had raised during its occupation would be given to their company. The agreement, which was signed by environmentalists, also provided that the company would donate the same amount to Cal Poly Humboldt for research on sustainable forestry practices.
Unfortunately, there was another enemy for Luna, a vandal who even today has no face, and who he ruined it with a chainsaw. The gash in the trunk – which measured 810mm deep and 5.8 meters around the base, just under half the circumference of the tree – was discovered in November 2000 by an environmental activist.
The situation immediately appeared complex, but botanical experts and competent activists found the solution: first they treated the gash in the sequoia with a herbal remedy, then the tree was stabilized with steel cables by Eureka civil engineer Steve Salzman. The cables were mainly used to strengthen the tree and to allow it to resist strong winds that could destabilize it.
From 2007 onwards Luna – which is under the tutelage of Sanctuary Foresta non-profit organization – began to grow normally again, although still supported by steel tie rods.
