In the summer of 1997, Julia Butterfly Hill met the redwoods of the northern California coastal region. She was not the first to have her life changed by a brief time under their branches, she was not the first to put many other aspects of her life aside to join in the struggle to save the giant trees. But she gained a special place in environmental history when she climbed into a tree named Luna and did not come down for 738 days; 738 days - over two years - is a very long time to spend in a tree, and those hours, weeks and years brought increasing public awareness to the devastation that happens daily behind the redwood curtain.

In Humboldt County, California, and elsewhere, the landscape regularly becomes its own slaughterhouse: the trees are destroyed, the remaining vegetation is coated with diesel and set afire, and then herbicides are poured over the land to keep new scrub growth to a minimum. This is called clear-cutting, and though many lumber companies protest that they rarely, if ever, clear-cut nowadays, anyone who lives in the redwood region knows those protests for the baldfaced lies that they are. When daily you drive beside trucks bearing giant dead trees, and entire hills and mountains sit newly stripped, baking under the sun, ugly and stubbled beside their still forested cousins, you know that clear-cutting is still much the practice in these forests.

Clear-cutting is beyond rape, because when the clear-cut is finished, there is almost nothing left alive. The trees are dead, the soil is destroyed, the water and the air are poisoned. In the months that Julia lived in Luna, she was to experience this firsthand, to see the trees brought down and the land set in flames; she was threatened from below the tree by lumber employees, and from the air by helicopters flown in violation of human safety laws. She was exposed to toxic fumes as the landscape around her was oiled and set afire. Living in a tree is difficult under any circumstances, but to stay there in the midst of such human harassment, and during storm years such as those that wracked the Pacific coasts during 1997 and 1998, takes an especially strong and committed personality. To do this and remain sane, gentle, and committed is an incredible accomplishment.

So perhaps what is most surprising about The Legacy of Luna is that it does not rave, it is not filled with depressive or antagonistic passages; instead, Julia Butterfly Hill provides a picture of her two years in Luna that includes not only her difficulties and her doubts, but the bliss and maturation she gained from the living being she inhabited. Her writing is a fresh breath across the environmental movement; it is youthful but not immature, it is fervent but thoughtful... it embodies a manner of hope.