The tree that kept a person
In December 1997 a 23-year-old named Julia Butterfly Hill climbed a coast redwood in Humboldt County, California, and did not come down for 738 days. She lived on two small platforms 180 feet up, through two winters, while the crews who meant to cut it waited below. The tree was about 1,000 years old, 200 feet tall, and had already been struck by lightning.
The deal that ended it: the Pacific Lumber Company would spare the tree and every tree in a 200-foot ring around it. The $50,000 that Hill and other activists raised while she sat up there went to the company; the company gave the same amount to Cal Poly Humboldt for research into sustainable forestry. She came down on December 18, 1999.
A year later someone cut a 32-inch gash into the trunk with a chainsaw. It's still standing. The wound was packed with an herbal remedy, an engineer's steel cables brace it against the wind, and a nonprofit called Sanctuary Forest holds it now.
The activists named it before she ever touched it: they built the platform at moonrise and called it Luna, Spanish for moon.
Seed 019 in the Living Archive. True name unprinted until a carrier says yes. Standing offer: paper.wf/lume