Posted on 08/26/2002 2:03:59 PM PDT by Glutton
FRESHWATER, Calif. - Though she has spent the past five months living 130 feet up an ancient redwood, Remedy - as the young woman calls herself during these days as a tree sitter - is hardly lonely.
People stop by all the time. On Saturday afternoon, when she rappelled about 100 feet down the bulky trunk of the 1,200-year-old tree to talk to a reporter, six supporters happened by, including a couple from down the road who brought two gallons of water, a phone buddy bearing bananas and peaches, and a local environmentalist and two friends from Berkeley who came by to say, "Way to go."
"I didn't know what to expect when I decided to do this," Remedy said, dangling from her tree from a harness and thick rope, barefoot and dreadlocked.
Like many tree sitters, Remedy, a 27-year-old former bookseller, does not give her real name. She moved to Humboldt County, in the redwood country of Northern California, from Olympia "because the trees were calling me."
Within a couple of days of climbing this tree ("it picked me"), supporters started coming out of the woodwork, so to speak, offering her amenities such as as a cell phone, food and company.
Not to mention that two months after Remedy climbed her tree, a 27-year-old woman from Matawan, N.J., who calls herself Wren climbed a redwood less than a hundred feet away, well within shouting distance.
Together, almost unwittingly, the women have become part of a very active movement of environmentalists who help people who perch in ancient trees to prevent them from being cut down survive their ordeal - and publicize their cause.
The movement stretches from Santa Cruz, Calif., about 75 miles south of San Francisco, and throughout the Pacific Northwest.
Neither task is easy. Remedy and Wren spend nights braced against 70 mph to 80 mph winds, and the rainy season has yet to begin. And unlike Julia "Butterfly" Hill, who lived in a 1,000-year-old tree here in Humboldt County for more than two years and wrote a book about it, most tree sitters - and there may be dozens at any one time - receive little attention from the outside world.
But their local supporters and opponents sure know where they are. The Pacific Lumber Co., which owns the trees that the two women are sitting in, along with more ancient redwoods than any other private logging company, is well aware of its latest tree sitters. So far, said Mary Bullwinkle, a company spokeswoman, no steps have been taken to have the women removed. But the company is not happy.
"We see this latest activity as one of many acts that include an escalated amount of protests that go beyond acts of civil disobedience," she said.
A couple of weeks ago, Bullwinkle said, protesters drove a car up to the front door of a company building in Scotia and chained themselves to the car. "It was very frightening," she said.
"The employees inside didn't know what was going to happen."
In another instance, she said, protesters stopped a loaded logging truck on a highway and chained themselves to its bottom.
"What we're seeing is basically ecoterrorism," she said.
Indeed, Pacific Lumber recently asked the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors to seek homeland security funds to help police the protests, a request board members rejected, and some even mocked.
It seems that these days, although Pacific Lumber still has plenty of support among residents who have depended on logging for generations, the company also has more dissidents in its ranks.
In the past decade since the company, under the ownership of the Maxxam Corp. of Houston, began aggressively cutting old growth redwoods, environmentalists and residents, including some former company workers, have blamed it for wreaking havoc.
Five regional watersheds have been severely damaged by massive amounts of silt associated with the company's tree cutting, hundreds of hillsides have been stripped so bare that mudslides occur after even light rain, and scores of houses have been flooded repeatedly.
That has given tree sitters such as Remedy and Wren new fans.
"We don't think the government should be calling us terrorists just because we want to save 2,500-year-old trees, and the watersheds," said Jane, a young woman from the neighborhood near Remedy's tree who did not want her full name used because she did not want to get arrested for assisting in civil disobedience.
She and her husband, Scott, had brought Remedy and Wren jugs of water, which they sent up in cloth sacks tied to the women's ropes.
The company blames nature for most of the damage.
Bullwinkle said that in the past two years Pacific Lumber had been more than careful about its logging operations, setting aside buffers, staying away from steep, unstable areas - "embarking on this new way of doing business." But environmentalists are not convinced.
Remedy and Wren say they plan on staying put until Pacific Lumber promises, at the very least, that the trees will not be cut.
Wren, wearing a wool ski cap and heavy parka when she greeted visitors on a 70-degree afternoon, is already prepared for winter.
And Remedy is getting there. She is crocheting herself a hat and a blanket.
Well, DUH. The tree grows under them, after all.
...other than to bite their sisters...
He also tried to gut the pention plans of retired workers, and the courts had to reinstate that money. He is greedy, cruel, and is only out for himself. It would behoove anyone who wants to cull out a prime example of a corporate 'Jack the Ripper' before this guy taints everyone else in jobs like his just by association.
his coming started the timber wars down there in the California norh coast, and it would be great to se him go away.
'Course, that might take a few years.....:)
Heavy clothing is also used to slow the spread of pepperspray if it is used by someone trying to remove them from the sit, and in a donut shaped platform with no furniture, heavy clothing can make things infinately more comfortable up there.
When I grew up in Matawan, it was so Republican that the official Republican and disgruntled Republican running as an independent both got more votes than the Democrat. I wonder if she is really from Aberdeen, which was more Democrat.
LOL! Oh, really? And what did the tree(s) say to you? "Come sit on us!" And why not use your real name... I mean, if this is such a noble cause why hide behind a fake name? Opps!! How silly of me! I suddenly realized it's a lot easier for her to change her name than for her family to change theirs!
Those out to gain notoriety for themselves are not wanted out there in the woods.
It is also part of the rite of passage of becoming a citizen of a "tree village," the common name for an area in the forest with several tree-sits.
Most sitters also cover their faces and don't talk about what they did out in the woods when they return to civilization.
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