738 days in a redwood tree

Julia Lorraine Hill was born on February 18, 1974, in Mount Vernon, Missouri. Her father was a traveling evangelical minister, and Julia Hill and her two brothers and her mother toured the country in a 32-foot camper. She spent many days of her early childhood playing outside in the woodlands and rivers near towns where her father was preaching.

In 1996, when she was 22 years old, tragedy struck: Hill was driving a car that was smashed by a drunk driver, and the steering wheel of the vehicle penetrated her skull.

It took almost of year of intense therapy before Hill could walk and talk normally again,

Hill and Luna

After her recuperation, Hill embarked on a road trip to California that was to change her life forever. In 1997, she connected with a group of "tree sitters" in northern California who were protesting the clear-cut logging of redwoods by occupying the trees.

Hill agreed to join in the protest, and within a matter of days, she was 180 feet above the ground, living on a pair of six-by-six-foot platforms in a 1500-year-old redwood tree nicknamed Luna.

During her time in Luna, Hill battled illness, harassment from helicopters, freezing temperatures, a siege by security, torrential rains and fierce winds from an El Ni?o winter, and other privations. She heated meals on a tiny propane stove and kept warm by staying in a sleeping bag day and night.

Her courage and tenacity attracted the attention of international media, and Hill became something of an eco-celebrity. She communicated with reporters and others with a solar-powered cell phone and appeared on cable television shows as an "in-tree" correspondent.

Weary of the negative publicity that Hill was attracting, in 1999 Pacific Lumber agreed to a resolution that preserved a 200-foot buffer zone around Luna and other old-growth redwood trees. Additionally, a $50,000 settlement was given to Pacific Lumber that was then donated to California's Humboldt State University for sustainable forestry research. Only then after 738 days of stay on LUNA, in December of 1999, did Hill come down from Luna.

Despite this victory, Luna's fate was not intact; the year after Hill came down from the redwood, Luna was vandalized with a chainsaw, which left a 32-inch-deep gash across half of the mighty tree's trunk. Only the dedicated efforts of arborists, who stabilized the tree with steel cables, saved the tree's life.

Reference from https://www.thespruce.com/the-life-of-julia-hill-1708797, Written by @Marc Lallanilla