the story of julia butterfly hill and her perseverance is truly amazing. i wish everyone was like her, willing to fight for what is right and what is good for our environment and lives.

although she faced horrible people/ corporations, julia never gave up, and i admire that. it makes you realize how unfair the world is, especially when you’re talking about huge companies who apparently can do anything they want. it’s really sad to see them destroying these beautiful forests, and the napalm julia describes made me upset too.

one thing i will say about this book and julia is her spirituality. i think that and her belief in god definitely helped her, but i will say she mentioned it a lot and gave so much credit to her “creator”. i will never judge anybody for their beliefs in anything, i was just making a note that it was a recurring theme throughout the book- her saying god gave her the strength and the ability to stay in a tree for so long. this is just a difference in my and her beliefs, and if this spirituality helped her, which i think it did, so be it. no judgment!!

one other thing i wanted to note: typos. maybe i’m reading incorrectly, maybe the sentences don’t make sense in my head, or maybe there are actually typos. there are multiple ones i noticed throughout the book, and one i remember most at the very end: julia says luna got a 20-foot buffer zone (i read it and was like, “that’s nothing!”), but i looked it up and it’s actually 200 feet. anyone else find typos?

anyway, most of these comments are just my opinions. long live luna!!!

This book is one of the best books I’ve ever read. It’s an emotional and powerful read. Definitely a book everyone should pick up.

In the middle of reading "The Overstory" I happened to work at my neighborhood library's book sale and happened to see the front cover of this book showing the author bare-footed free-climbing over 100 feet above ground. There is no doubt in my mind that Richard Powers has read this book as parts of Julia have obviously made their way into the character of Olivia in his book. The memoir Julia has written is of her time in the giant 1000-yr-old redwood known as Luna. She spent 2 years in that tree in order to prevent it from being logged. It speaks of her motivation and spirituality and includes some of her poetry and art. Her writing is not lyrical or earth-shatteringly profound, but two things she wrote were rather easy to understand analogies for those who don't quite understand the consequences of our human actions. One was in reference to the interconnectedness of ecological systems: "You cannot rip out one thread and not have the whole tapestry begin to unravel." The other was comparing what we are doing to banking, perhaps language that capitalists are better able to understand: "No one has the right to steal from the future in order to make a quick buck today. Enough is enough. It's time we as humans return to living only off the Earth's interest instead of drawing from the principal."

4.5 everyone read this right now

If you have ever been called a tree-hugger, environmentalist, then this book is for you. When I first read this book, I wanted to do everything I could to save our trees, and subsequently almost got in a lot of trouble with the law because of it!
This book is about a young woman, Julie "Butterfly" Hill, who agrees to do a short "tree-sit" in a redwood in Northern Cali. Unknown to her at the time, she would not set foot on the ground again for nearly 2 years! Her story deals with everything from wildlife to life threatening storms. She endured many physical and mental challenges in order to protect a tree from its certain death. She is a roll model for all who believe one person can't make a difference.

I want to live in a tree!!!!

She was selfless and determined to save Luna and make a difference for saving forests. Too bad big corporations get away with illegal manipulations and governments allow it. Money talks louder than the crash of the biggest falling trees, fastest landslides, and endangering of our ecosystem. Most of us are just an annoying insect on the faces of corporations making millions. She sure gave the issue her best. 7 out of 10

I have copied many many paragraphs from this book and included them in the notes here. This is a story about events that happened about 20 years ago. But it is a story about events that happen continuously as some people undertake civil disobedience for causes that move us to dramatic action.

Julia butterfly Hill has taken this life-changing episode of her life into a future where she continues to try to make the world a better place and encourages us to join her in that effort.

Some people in social change movements hope for the impact and notoriety that Julia achieved. Most of us will fall far short of that but reading this book may help us to understand how a mere mortal such as Julia came to be a familiar name to many of us.

God and spirituality played a big role in Julia's effort. In some ways that came easy to her as the daughter of a itinerant preacher. As a person who is non-religious and even irreligious I am often sorry to find religion as such a motivator for action. But it worked for her.

I stumbled across this story through one of those "crazy things you won't believe actually happened" lists, and one of the "crazy things" was a woman who lived in a tree for two years... So naturally, I went to the comments section, and as soon as I saw there was a memoir of said tree lady, I figured I'd read it, and see how the heck that happened!!
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Aaaaand, I was pleasantly surprised by Julia's tale! - what an incredible thing to do, and an amazing cause to fight for. Very, very impressive!
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#savethetrees

The Legacy of Luna by Julia Butterfly Hill was recommended as a good follow-up to The Overstory by Richard Powers, and I enjoyed Hill’s book very much. It’s quite depressing to see how little has changed in the 18 years since the two books were published. What is affirming is Hill’s story, the knowledge she shares, and the examples she sets, i.e. “Yes, one person can make a difference. Each one of us does (238).

Hill lived in a thousand-year-old redwood tree in Humboldt, CA from December 10, 1997 to December 18, 1999, mostly on a platform 180 feet in the air, to try to stop clear cutting and to save old growth trees. She did save that tree, but depressingly little has changed in terms of recognizing the value of old growth forests.

Part of the motivation of activists in the area at that time was the destruction of homes in the town of Stafford, CA caused by a mudslide after clear cutting. Pacific Lumber Company was responsible, but, “It had been pretty much the only business in the area for a hundred fifty years. Almost everyone had an intricate family tie to the company—a grandfather worked in the sawmill, a brother in the woods, an uncle on a logging truck. Challenging the hand that fed them was difficult at best” (xiv).

Hill is the daughter of a poor itinerant preacher who moved his family frequently. She learned “how to save money and be thrifty … how to appreciate the simple things in life” (3). After recovering from serious injuries in a car accident, she set out looking for a way to make a contribution to the world around her.

“I’ve always felt that as long as I was able, I was supposed to give all I’ve got to ensure a healthy and loving legacy for those still to come, and especially for those with no voice. That is what I’ve done with this tree” (3).

The book covers most aspects of her life during the two years of her tree sit. She describes how she gets food and lives in the space of two platforms, one 6’ x 8’, the other 4’ x 8’. From a novice with no climbing experience, she becomes a tree dweller who “kept at it, without harness, rope, or shoes, and learned how to disperse my weight between both hands and legs so that I never put too much weight on anyone branch. …I explored the canopy, the upper half of Luna. There’s a whole forest in her, and it’s absolutely magical” (121).

Living in a tree, during winter storms, took its toll, but strengthened her already strong religious faith. She writes, “My sanity felt like it was slipping through my fingers like a runaway rope. And I gave in. …people no longer had any power over me. …I was going to live my life guided from the higher source, the Creation source. …That’s the message of the butterfly. I had come through darkness and storms and had been transformed. I was living proof of the power of metamorphosis” (114-115).

As the quotations show, Hill has an impressive command of language, and she includes poems throughout the book. She was born in February, and Luna is where she celebrates her 24th and 25th birthdays. She learns a great deal about environmental issues, interacting with people from lumber jacks to timber company CEOs and a wide range of journalists. Forest activist Robert Parker “helped establish a Web site. He set up an office where the press could call and actually find a human. He turned it into a well-oiled, international outreach machine. Gradually Hill had and used a phone and a pager and “solar panels now hung from Luna’s limbs, collecting precious sun and recharging batteries” (131).

Hill recognizes that outsiders have no idea how her life works, and she is happy to be clear about things when she is interviewed: “Well, I go to the bathroom like everyone else, but I use a bucket. I take sponge bathes (sic) using water that I collect in my tarp. And who need a boyfriend? I have a tree” (231).

Eventually she negotiates a deal with a spokesperson for Pacific Lumber: the company “could take what they had already cut down. In return, we would get Luna and a two-hundred-foot buffer of what remained. Actually quite a bit of it was left, including several large trees, two of which had been marked to be cut down” (225).

She is bereft to leave Luna, but comforted when she begins to descend and believes the tree tells her, “Julia, all you have to do when you are afraid, lonely, worn out, or overwhelmed is touch your heart. Because it is there that I truly am, and it is there I will always be” (246).

According to Wikipedia, “Since her tree sit, Hill has become a motivational speaker (holding some 250 events a year), a best-selling author, and the co-founder of the Circle of Life Foundation (which helped organize We The Planet, an eco-friendly music tour) and the Engage Network, a nonprofit that trains small groups of civic leaders to work toward social change.”
She has a website (https://www.juliabutterflyhill.com/) and a blog and does life coaching.

i am more in awe of human beings everyday

I read this just after visiting the Sequoias and Redwoods. I was going to college out west when this tree sit took place and I remember the environmental fight very well (and not just for the trees). I love the story and I think it is incredible that she stayed in the tree for that long. Her spiritual journey is inspiring. The writing was pretty basic and I was able to read it in a day and that is why I gave it 3 stars.