Author(s): Julia Hill

Biography & Memoir

On December 18, 1999, Julia Butterfly Hill's feet touched the ground for the first time in over two years, as she descended from "Luna," a thousand-year-old redwood in Humboldt County, California. Hill had climbed 180 feet up into the tree to stop Pacific Lumber, a division of the Maxxam Corporation, from the environmentally destructive process of clear-cutting the ancient redwood and the trees around it. Over the course of what turned into an historic civil action, Hill endured El Ni o storms, helicopter harassment, a ten-day siege by company security guards, and the tremendous sorrow brought about by an old-growth forest's destruction. This story-written while she lived on a tiny platform eighteen stories off the ground-is one that only she can tell.

"My respect for Julia Butterfly Hill is fathomless. At a time when so many have grown disheartened at the inability of any one person to make a difference, Julia's action has profoundly re-energized the environmental movement all over the world. She will continue to be a major force in galvanizing the call to change the way corporations and uncaring governments do business with Mother Earth."-Bonnie Raitt