May
2002
The
Butterfly Effect
The Satya Interview with Julia
Butterfly Hill
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In 1997, a young woman climbed a tree to protest the
destruction of old growth trees in California. Once up there, she realized
just how
dire the situation was—that nearly 97 percent of the coastal redwood
forests had been cut down, and logging operations were still clearcutting
vast acres, sawing everything down and destroying ancient ecosystems
forever. She remained in the tree, camped out 200 feet above the ground,
for two years. The woman in the tree, who flummoxed a massive logging
corporation, drew media attention from around the globe. That tree
was
“Luna”—a 1,000 year-old redwood—and that woman
was Julia Butterfly Hill. Since then, the grove where Luna resides
is protected,
and many in this world will never look at a tree the same way again.
They say that the flutter of a butterfly’s wings can set in motion
a chain of events that can have profound effects felt on the opposite
side of the planet. This is Julia’s message—both in herself
as a living example, and in her new book, One Makes a Difference: Inspiring
Actions that Change our World (HarperCollins). “I climbed into
the tree because it’s all I knew to do,” she says simply.
“I had to do something.”
After climbing down in December of 1999, Julia has written a moving
account of her days in Luna, The Legacy of Luna (HarperCollins). She
also established a nonprofit foundation and has been in high demand
as a speaker. On a sunny day in Manhattan’s Gramercy Park, Catherine
Clyne caught up with Julia to hear about her new book, how she handles
her sudden celebrity and how her life has been since she left Luna.
Tell us about the Circle of Life foundation and the philosophy behind
it.
I created Circle of Life to help the wheel of life—that circle
in which all energy flows—roll as beautifully and wonderfully
as it can.
When I was in the tree, I saw all this energy coming at me because
of what I call “celebrititis.” Celebrititis is the disease that
makes us put people on pedestals and then try to rip them down. It makes
us think that just because someone is on a perceived pedestal, they’re
more special or important than anybody else. I think that this is an
excruciatingly disempowering part of our world. I saw all this energy
coming to me and I wanted it to go back out, to go somewhere—not
to just stop with me. If it stops with me, it’s not helping the
world. So I created Circle of Life to help that energy continue to
flow.
I come from a very “human” perspective in the work that I
do. When I say that, though, I don’t see nature as something separate
from human and vice versa. For me, this is not “our” earth,
this is us earth—We the planet, all of us together. Circle of Life’s
mission is to help people be active wherever they are in their walk
in life; whether it’s using education, inspiration or connection.
So how do you do that?
We do lots of different things. We help host conferences, we are working
on producing materials for teachers and students, we do a lot of collaboration.
So right now I’m on my book tour. One of the ways we work is that
as part of my contract, I’ll only do events at independent bookstores.
Also every one of my book readings has to be an awareness and fundraiser
for local groups. Here in New York, it’s the Active Element Foundation
[activeelement.org], which supports youth activism through funding.
They see—as I do—that the funding mechanisms for activism
are really screwed up. It takes up so much time jumping through all
the hoops to prove your value as an activist—time that could be
put into activism. When in actuality if something somebody’s doing
resonates with our hearts, we should just fund it. Period.
Tell us about One Makes a Difference: Inspiring Actions that Change
our World and what sort of people you are getting your message out to
through the book.
At first glance it may look like yet another “50 Ways to Save the
Earth”; but that’s not what it’s about. It’s about
conscious, loving, joyous actions every moment of every day. It’s
a response to a lot of people being very kind and coming up to me and
saying, “Thank you, Julia, for showing us that one person can make
a difference,” with the emphasis on can. When I was in that tree
I learned beyond a shadow of a doubt that every single moment of every
day there’s a choice, and every single choice affects the world,
whether we see it or not. It’s not can we make a difference, it
is we do make a difference. The question we must ask ourselves is what
kind of a difference we are going to make. This book is a response
to
that, about all the ways we can help make a difference. It uses really
inspirational stories of unsung heroes like the next-door neighbor
you
thought was really shy and never did anything, who steps up and changes
a community.
Inspiration is great when it becomes a motivation to take action; then
it means something. That’s what this book is trying to do: take
the inspiration a lot of people have said that my action has given
them
and help them realize how we can all become a hero for the world.
As with the first book, I’m about a message and that message is
about action; a certain kind of action. One of the ways I sign my books
is “Love in Action.” For me, love has got to become a verb
if we really want to make this a beautiful world, and a healthy and
just world for all beings.
How does it feel to be such a conduit for all of that energy?
I had to create ritual in my life to help me deal with it, actually.
It was very overwhelming. You don’t climb into a tree expecting
to become a public figure. Ever since you were little, you climb into
trees to have solitude. [laughs] It’s like I’ve been thrust
into this whole other world.
One of my daily prayers is “May I show up and get out of the way.”
What that means is, if we don’t show up, we can’t be of service;
but if we show up and we’re in the way, our egos are too invested;
we can’t really be of service. That helps keep me grounded. I think
that’s crucial in doing this work.
That’s pretty profound. Most activists can’t do that.
That’s one of the problems I see—inflated egos getting in
the way.
In relation to that, how did it feel when you hit the ground after two
years of solitude in the tree; then all of a sudden there were all these
people around you?
A lot of people don’t realize that people were around me non-stop—not
in person but by phone. The reason people heard me on the radio or in
a magazine somewhere is because I was living in my campaign office 24
hours a day, seven days a week for two years and eight days and I couldn’t
pretend like I wasn’t at home. So I was “on” all the
time. [laughs] I spent six to eight hours a day on that phone: lobbying
the government; addressing the UN; speaking to preschools and colleges;
doing interviews with people just like this. I was bombarded, but from
a distance, so that helped buffer me. But 36 hours after I came down
from Luna, I was in New York City—36 hours. And it was brutal.
That’s part of how this book came about, because I felt like I
was coming back to an industrialized nation after living in a Third
World country for two years; coming in with a totally new perspective
of how we have created a disposable world. In that tree I came to such
a profound understanding that life is not throw-away. The earth and
our selves are not disposable. We’re sacred. Walking around in
this city and seeing disposable on every corner in every hand in every
way, I felt like I kept getting stabbed. It made me think, This is where
the activism starts. As we’re walking down the street, as we walk
into the café, as we go to the store, this is where the activism
has to start.
Well…this park is kind of nice.
This is something really wonderful here. I’ve been trying to support
things like community gardens. I’m not saying that cities are horrible.
I think the kindest gift we can give to the earth is to live in a city.
But we also need to learn to live in it in a healthier way, where we
create real communities where every community has a garden to go to
and rest and rejuvenate their souls. The work I’ve been doing since
September 11 is to try and create a garden there—a living memorial
to the people who died, instead of a cold stone wall that’s dead.
Some people have been talking about that—planting trees at “Ground
Zero” as a memorial. It’d be quite profound to have a forest
there.
My thought is if every person who lost someone could come and plant
something in honor of that person, it would be something that comes
back every year—a living testament to the experience. You could
have this lush beautiful place there, just from people planting their
love into the ground.
Have you had a chance to visit Luna since you came down? How is
she?
Yes. Luna is doing better than anyone expected. She was attacked over
a year after I came down, and we knew that was a possibility. There’s
no such thing as permanent protection. Luna became a symbol, and as
we saw here [in New York], when something becomes a powerful symbol,
it’s attacked—for different reasons. Somebody with a lot of
anger attacked a tree that can’t defend itself. It would’ve
killed most trees, but redwoods have an ability to survive profound
things. Luna is doing better than surviving, and not just Luna—we
protected a grove around the tree. People are so focused on Luna because
it’s the tree that I was in, but the reality is sometimes we can
love something to death—it’s a pretty small grove and it didn’t
get trampled just from the logging company, it got trampled from people
loving it. People from all over the world come for this Mecca experience,
which had a huge impact. Now the whole area’s healing, things that
were downtrodden are starting to grow back, it’s really beautiful.
Can you tell us your thoughts on the issue of diversity among activists,
and why you moved from the countryside to Oakland?
Two years after I came down from the tree I was based out of Humboldt
County, and I dove into the deep end of direct action. I saw how much
anger pervades that community, and I continued to get ripped apart
by
people who are supposed to be allies. I was sitting in the tree one
day after an intense conversation with somebody just ripping me up
one
side and down the other; I was looking out over the hillsides and I
saw all these clearcuts, and it hit me: How are we ever going to end
clearcutting in the world if we’re so effectively clearcutting
each other? And I felt that in clearcutting each other, we were demanding
a monoculture of our movement. Why would we want a monoculture of a
movement any more than we would want a monoculture of a forest? The
diversity of the natural world is where the strength and beauty and
balance comes from, and we need that in human nature as well as in our
movement. It’s crucial that we don’t all agree, because if
we did, we wouldn’t live in a diverse world—not healthy, strong
or balanced. That doesn’t mean we can’t come to a place of
balance with different opinions.
I saw that in the movement there’s a profound lack of diversity,
even in the area of Humboldt County. Most of the people who own land
in that area were part of the back-to-the-land movement during the hippie
era; or they’re huge corporate land owners, who are logging it
into oblivion. That’s as far as the diversity goes. So the activist
movement is predominantly white and I felt that was part of the imbalance,
part of why we haven’t been able to come to a solution that works
for everybody. We’re coming at it like a horse with blinders on,
we can see the vision but we can’t see the greater context that
holds that vision.
So I decided to move my life down to Oakland, and shortly after moving
I merged with the Books Not Bars, Schools Not Jails campaign and joined
with the community garden movement. A lot of the work is about protecting
diversity, and it’s exciting because it’s raw. People say,
“Oh my God, you’re in the city, how are you dealing? Oh you
poor thing!” But what makes me jazzed up is wildness and diversity,
and you tend to find that more in a city than you do out on a 40-acre
flat where you have beautiful land but you don’t have that human
connection.
How does being ‘on the go’ affect all that? I mean, you
have this home now in Oakland but you’re away 200-plus days of
the year?
Being this busy and on the road this much has taught me to find the
wildness in the midst of nowhere. People ask how I stay balanced and
grounded. If I’m walking down a city street and I see a tree whose
roots are pushing up through the sidewalk, I stop and I celebrate. How
often do we walk by and not think anything, or think ‘Oh look,
it’s breaking up the concrete, somebody might trip.’ I stop
and think, Go tree, you can do it! I’m celebrating the wildness
pushing through an obstacle that at first seems [impenetrable]. That’s
the kind of thing that gets me remembering how magnificent wildness
is and that it exists everywhere if we just choose to have our eyes
open to see it.
That’s different from your stereotypical environmentalist, who
tends to be more interested in saving the wildness out there, and isn’t
very concerned with urban areas. You’re sort of flipping that
on its head. Do a lot of people get angry at you?
Oh yeah, definitely. I try and be careful with my words, recognizing
that they are powerful forces in our lives. The reality is no matter
how hard I try, I’m always offending somebody because words are
associated with their own context, and what works for one person is
not going to work for another. I’ve gotten frustrated at the lack
of grace in our movement that doesn’t allow someone to speak with
the recognition that their intention is not to offend. It’s about
learning to stay centered in the storm. That’s one of the things
the tree taught me: trees stay rooted in their connection to life,
and
yet they learn how to bend and blow with the wind.
Even when people are screaming and angry at me, I still try and honor
their passion. I’ve had people so close to me that their spit hits
me in the face, and when they’re done the first thing I do is say,
“Thank you so much for your passion, it is so refreshing.”
At first they think I’m being sarcastic, but I say, “No, whether
you believe it or not, I’m serious; I’m really thankful for
your passion,” and it takes people aback. I say, work at whatever
you’re passionate about; then we don’t have to attack “environmentalists”
who only care about nature and we don’t have to attack “social
activists” for only caring about people.
When we honor each other for standing up for a passion, we learn that
we are all one, that as we work for social justice we are working for
ecological justice, and vice versa. The forces that are oppressing
and
destroying one are the same exact forces that are oppressing and destroying
another. If we can just learn to open our eyes to that, I think it’s
going to make our movement a lot stronger and more beautiful.
How did you arrive at this consciousness? When you climbed into
Luna, weren’t you thinking more strictly along the lines of ‘save
the wild spot’?
I didn’t know anything that was going on in the world when I climbed
that tree; I only knew about the redwoods. I didn’t have a bigger
view of the world, I just didn’t know better. Here I am, world-known
now for being a “hardcore activist” and yet I didn’t
come from that perspective. I majored in business in college; I started
my own business when I was 18 years old; I eventually became an independent
consultant: I was the epitome of what most activists despise. So we
have to allow a period of grace for ourselves in the world. It’s
so crucial in consciousness-shifting to have the attitude that we’re
all human, you cannot be perfect in the world today.
I climbed into the tree because it’s all I knew to do I grew up
with two brothers and no sisters, so I climbed a lot of trees. I learned
that 97 percent of the ancient redwoods are already destroyed, and the
way they’re still being destroyed is so horrible and so toxic.
I had to do something, so I climbed into that experience and I started
gaining a whole new perspective, I started learning. I learned so much
in those two years, and the more I learned, the more my perspective
grew.
I think one of the things I had to learn that I hadn’t really understood
before was the privilege of being in white skin. And that’s been
a real challenge for me because I will give anything in my life to make
the world a better place, so I’ve gotten hurt and angry at being
judged because I have white skin. My white skin does give me a level
of privilege, so how do I learn to handle that without feeling judged
and/or judging myself? I think that’s part of our concern in the
movement; how do we honor diversity without making someone feel bad?
I was raised really poor, so that gives me an understanding of people
who are predominantly in skins of color. If we work towards long-term
sustainability it’s got to work for everybody. So if we’re
pushing for organic food, it’s got to be for everybody, not just
those who can afford it. When we work on community gardens, it can’t
just be a garden that’s only open to the people who have the money
to go there, it’s got to be open to everybody.
You come into contact with rich people and celebrities a lot. How
do you deal with being exposed to wealth?
One of the things I do is I don’t call money “money,”
I call it “green energy,” because every single thing in our
life is energy, whether you’re looking at it from a philosophical
or a scientific standpoint. When we say the word “money,”
as conscious people, what are the feelings that come up inside ourselves?
We come up with disgust, sadness, anger, fear—lots of really negative
energy that we then put into our money. How can it bring about healing
in our world if we’re putting that much negative energy into it?
So calling money “green energy” is part of how I deal with
being around rich people. I start shifting the words and I talk to
them
about how to create green energy in their lives, and I try to get them
excited about using their money as green energy.
And then the inverse of that, how do you deal with all the stereotypes
of being a white treehugger? How do you reach out to communities of
color and people who are impoverished who may not trust you?
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve cried because I’ve
tried to help not to hand out, but to say ‘hey, how can I be your
sister, how can I be your partner?’ Coming from that open heart
and getting emotionally punched, it feels like I’m getting knocked
out. I’ve found that one of the things I have to do is find someone
from that community, who understands my heart, who knows that I’m
not looking to be the white American savior, that I’m just looking
to be of service to the community—a sister and a partner. Otherwise
it’s not going to work, because then I just look like yet another
white person who wants to come in and fix all the problems that exist
in the community when they actually started with white people. And yet
at the same time, I have been so hurt and so angered by the same issues
arising in people of color. So it’s a really tough balance—how
do we speak truth, how do we speak justice, recognizing the inconsistencies
and imbalance? I also refuse to be emotionally brutalized because I’m
a white woman. I’m going to stand up and say I am a woman, hear
me roar; I am a white tribe, and as a white tribe I am working to bring
healing back to the world and I will honor that whether someone else
will or not. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. But you
have to keep trying.
That parallels some feminist ideas. Do you consider yourself a feminist?
I don’t consider myself an ‘ist’ anything—I’m
not an ist or an ism. Personally, I believe that the ists and the isms
are part of the problem because it creates boxes and borders. I understand
that we create isms and ists and labels to try and relate to something,
but I almost feel like we’ve gotten to the point where it’s
in reverse, where now it’s beginning to separate us and I think
that’s extremely dangerous. If somebody says they’re a feminist,
that [often] means men don’t have a place in this world. We need
the balance, the interconnection; we thrive on interdependence, not
on separation. So when I do work in the feminist community, I talk
about
how to create mutual forms of support, because our paradigm is that
perceived power means abuse, and I recognize perceived power. Some
people
build huge towers of power on perception, so how do we take those towers
back down. And as women, how do we support each other in rising into
our power instead of ripping each other down?
And so I can fit into all kinds of ists and isms, but I also hope that
I exist in the larger context.
Who are some of the people who inspire you?
Mostly it’s the unsung heroes; the kind of people who act on incredible
kindness, and they don’t do it to say, ‘Oh, look at me.’ They
see something or someone in need and they do something about it. It
just gets me every time.
Have you been talking at all about what’s been going on in
the Middle East?
I do talk about it and try to raise awareness and funds for people
who are working to bring about healing through peace, instead of healing
through violence. If we want to help bring about peace in the Middle
East, the first thing we can do is take away all the millions of dollars
we’re giving to Israel for the huge forms of mass destruction.
It would totally shift the dynamics; they’d run out of money to
keep those weapons going, and then they would have to figure out a
different
way of bringing about peace.
Ultimately what [the conflict] teaches us is that fundamentalism is
destructive in any arena. We have to find solutions that include all
of us, not just some of us.
On a more positive note, if friends were coming over to your house,
what would you make them?
[laughs] I’d make them really yummy vegan food, and I do it all
the time! I love turning people onto good food. When you eat good food
by yourself it’s one thing, but there’s nothing like taking
a bite and turning to somebody and going, “Mmm! Wow!” Both
your eyes will just be glowing.
I make a living burrito—a decadent Hawaiian-Thai infusion living
salad in a wrap. I use purple cabbage and put in whatever vegetables
are fresh. Then I add layers. I make an herb nut cheese, and add mangoes,
avocado, and a spicy peanut sauce that gets dribbled over the top. I
also like to put in strips of coconut (which you can’t get locally).
The only intensive part is the nut cheese. The rest of it is just chopping
stuff up and throwing it in, but it looks and feels decadent.
What do you do about food when you’re traveling?
I actually make most of my own food when I’m on the road. It’s
funny having to go through airport security now, because I have a bag
that’s just food. I get checked every time. They pull all this
stuff out of the bag and they ask “What is this?” and I say,
“If you and I had lunch together from the food in this bag, you
would change your eating habits.”
I love cooking for people, and I also love uncooking for people. When
I was in the tree I got turned onto living foods and how it’s yet
another gentler way of being with the earth—to a point; the living
foods movement is also using lots of packaging, in some places. Most
of the time, even organic stuff comes packaged in plastic, and I’m
wondering what’s organic about petroleum being wrapped around
our food.
And transportation for non-seasonal foods…
And the fuel that goes into running the blenders, dehydrators and all
that. There’s not a way to live perfectly in the world, so I don’t
get up on a high horse. I’m about making food that feels good,
tastes good, is good for the earth and for our bodies, and is as local
as possible. So I just try and eat really simply, but you can’t
always do that. It’s about eating joyously and vibrantly, on a
more fun note.
One of the ways I help raise money for groups is to attend benefits,
not only as a guest appearance, but also as a guest chef. I just did
a fundraiser where I was co-producer, main chef, and presenter. Most
of the people who showed up had money, but weren’t even vegetarians.
I cooked a completely vegan meal, and half of it was living foods.
It
was so much fun to talk to them about how their food choices can change
the world, and have them experience that change in their mouths, in
their hearts, and in their beings; everybody left just glowing.
Visit www.circleoflifefoundation.org/home.html
to learn more and to get involved. To read an interview with Julia from
when she was residing in Luna, see the January, 1999 issue of Satya
or www.satyamag.com/jan99/sat.54.butt.html.
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