If rereading and reposting these old essays is painful, it's not in the way one might expect. I really don't regret stepping away from academia. I'm not particularly sad that my dissertation is unfinished. What is painful instead, especially as I revisit my political scholarship, is the "where are we now" element -- both in terms of the progress we made (or rather haven't made) towards radical social/environmental transformation and in terms of -- quite literally -- where many of my activist/informant/friends are today.

Jail. Dead. In hiding. In limbo. In cognito.

Not everyone, mind you. Despite the full force of government suppression of radical environmentalism under Bush, some still fight the good fight. Some fight different fights (I'd put myself in that category, I guess). Some have given up, given in; some don't have the fight in them any more.

As I was preparing to upload my article "'Can't See the Forest for Her Tree' - Activism, Celebrity & Julia 'Butterfly' Hill," I googled Hill, curious to see what she is up to these days. Last I knew, she'd found her niche as a spiritual motivational speaker of sorts. Despite gaining fame via her stint as a treesitter in Earth First!'s Headwaters forest campaign, Hill never really identified herself as part of the radical environmental movement. And sure enough, I found her blog, saw she'd just returned from a vacation in Jamaica and was planning to do some speaking engagements with a bunch of folks whose names I didn't recognize but who are (oh I'm quite sure) gurus -- much kinder, gentler, peaceful people than punks like me.

But hey, I've got a lot of academic mileage out of writing about Hill. I presented the essay below at the Taking Nature Seriously: Citizens, Science, and the Environment conference at the University of Oregon and at the Looking Forward, Looking Back, Lewis & Clark Gender Studies Symposium at Lewis & Clark University in 2001. I published a version of it in the Women and Environments International journal. And along with my friend Tina Richardson, co-wrote a chapter in Women and the Media: National and Global Perspectives on Hill and Erin Brokovich. "Butterflies and Boobs (Or, How to Manufacture an Environmental Pin-Up Girl)" -- best. title. ever.

I admit, I was tempted to spend some time going through her blog, re-familiarizing myself with her narrative. While I opted not to ("who cares"), I did notice immediately that she uses only the lower-case i to reference herself, a stylistic choice meant I'd imagine to reinforce that she is just this wee little voice, unworthy of as large a letter as a capital I would provide. (Interestingly, Julia Butterfly Hill remains capitalized.)

When I presented this paper at the Taking Nature Seriously conference, someone in the audience accused me -- in not so many words -- of being a woman-hating bitch for saying such mean things about such a nice girl. Despite all my years of education and despite all the years that have passed since I wrote the essay, my response to that remains, "hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha."

An excerpt from "'Can't See the Forest for Her Tree' - Activism, Celebrity & Julia 'Butterfly' Hill." Click here for the full article: http://audreywatters.com/tree.pdf

Julia Butterfly Hill also deploys a gendered image that distinguishes her from Earth First! - both in its male?centered, redneck in the woods origins and in its later, more feminist manifestations. Unlike Judi Bari, for example, Hill offers neither a feminist analysis of her experience in the forest campaign, nor an eco?feminist analysis of the destruction of the forests. She relies instead on quite a traditional notion of femininity, perhaps most evident in her use of beauty to persuade people of her cause. For example, while contemplating how to convince loggers to understand her, she asks herself,

. . .how can I get them to let go of their stereotypes of me? Because in their mind, I was a tree?hugging, granola?eating, dirty, dreadlocked hippie environmentalist. They always managed to say this word with such disgust and disdain! As I thought about this one afternoon, I remembered that I still had copies of one of the nicest snapshots ever taken of me, from my dear friend's birthday just three months before I'd come up into the tree. . . . Maybe seeing me made up and dressed in a silk suit and heels would shake up their stereotypes of me! (2000, 69?70).

She proceeds to lower her photograph (with a baggie of granola) to a logger on the ground, encouraging the logger to consume the image - and the cereal - and rethink his position.

Damn! the logger exclaims. You really look like this!

Yeah.

Then what the hell you doing up in a tree?

. . . The loggers joked that I had climbed into a tree simply because I hadn't found the right guy (2000, 71).

Hill insists this exchange made the logger receptive to her on a human level. However, it may be more accurate to say she reached him on a heterosexual level. Regardless, deploying beauty as a political strategy is not a typical tactic for eco?warriors.

The differences between Hill and Earth First! are not only restricted to narrative structure or rhetorical style. Hill explicitly states her distinction from Earth First!. In her autobiography, she claims to have never heard of Earth First! until she was down on the ground after an initial stint in Luna.

What's Earth First!? I asked.

It's the group you're a part of! he answered.

I am not a part of any group! I retorted, somewhat indignantly.

Well, they're the ones who started this tree?sit.

That was the first I'd heard of them.

So you haven't had any nonviolence or backwoods training? he asked. That's against the regulations.

I started laughing.

You have to have rules and regulations to sit in a tree? I just came because there was no one else (2000, 45).

Despite Hill's repeated condemnation of the movement's rules and regulations, Earth First! is hardly a bureaucratic organization - it is anarchic, grassroots, and affinity?based. Hill asserts, Earth First! is a diverse group that operates under the rule of consensus. I didn't abide by that. I didn't ask anyone's permission to stay in Luna, I just did it. Ironically, their opposition only encouraged me to continue on (2000, 84). Early in her story, when local Earth First!ers decide to end the Luna sit and move resources to another endangered area, Hill is furious. The thought of all these people sitting down there in a circle talking about me and determining that I didn't have a right to be in Luna, as if they owned the tree, made me crazy (2000, 87). Despite the fact that Earth First!ers found the tree and Earth First!ers named the tree and Earth First!ers built the sit, and despite the fact that, initially at least, Earth First!ers paid the bills and provided the ground support, Hill claimed that this was her tree.

Although the divisions between Hill and Earth First! became apparent during her stay in Luna, the circumstances surrounding her descent were the final blow to this already tenuous relationship. As speech communication scholar Jonathan Lange notes in his article on the rhetoric of Earth First!, the group's motto, essential premise, and principal rhetorical stance is 'No Compromise in Defense of Mother Earth' (1990, 473). And Julia Butterfly Hill compromised. As part of the deal that Hill and her lawyers negotiated with Pacific Lumber, Hill paid the company a 50,000 fine to save Luna and a surrounding twenty-foot buffer zone of trees. Interestingly, Hill omits this fact from her autobiography.

* Thanks to Donna Haraway for this description of Luna. Ahh, Donna Haraway -- that's another topic for another day.