And it may often be as simple as that. In The People Who Hugged the Trees, Deborah Lee Rose has adapted the story of a group of villagers who gave their lives for their forest some three hundred years ago in India. Rose's protagonist, Amrita, is a girl with a great love of the trees that are her shelter, her shade and her water. She knows that at the edge of the desert, the forest is life, and promises herself to it in return. Before she left the forest, Amrita kissed her special tree. Then she whispered, "Tree if you are ever in trouble, I will protect you." And, to the best of her ability, she does. As Amrita grows, she is faithful to the trees, and teaches her own children to respect and honor their kinship with the forest. Later, when the Maharajah sends men to log the forest, the villagers, let by Amrita, resist, literally placing their bodies between tree and axe. When the Maharajah comes to strike down the villagers, a fortuitous storm arises, demonstrating for the Maharajah the exact cost of cutting down the forest.

In history, the storm did not arise so conveniently, and several hundred people died to protect their land. But the strength of those people fills movements like the Chipko (Hug the Tree) in India, and the circles of hands that are joined to protect the California redwoods today. Amrita Devi is not so different from Julia Butterfly Hill, nor are tree-huggers from tree-sitters: both the passive resistance and the unshakable belief that as so goes the forest, so also go we, are the same.