The Legacy of Luna: The Story of a Tree, a Woman and the Struggle to Save the Redwoods

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 Niño 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