Tree-sitters in Costilla County

EARTHKEEPING NEWS
A NEWSLETTER OF THE NORTH AMERICAN COALITION FOR CHRISTIANITY AND ECOLOGY

Volume Eight, Number Two
January/February 1999

ON WITNESS:
A MESSAGE TO FRIENDS COMMITTEE ON UNITY WITH NATURE (FCUN)

I had a chance last June to meet for two days with several dozen tree-sitters like Julia Hill at a national gathering of their movement hosted by Ancient Forest Rescue in Costilla County, Colorado. Costilla County is the site of the largest single clear-cut in North America.

They had invited me to talk with them about religious techniques, particularly witness. Only two or three of them had any significant knowledge of any religion.

What hit me hardest about that group was their youth and poverty. The majority were in their teens and early twenties. It was cold where they were meeting at ten thousand feet elevation, and there was real danger of rain or snow. Few of them had tents, and many of their sleeping bags were of the cheapest sort. The first person I talked with was sharing what she called "dumpster pizza" with her friends ö literally, pizza fished out of a restaurant dumpster. It was all she could afford to eat.

Their poverty, homelessness and hunger did not seem to trouble them at all. They were serenely happy people. They had shed their attachments to security on their journey.

The slow pace of their struggle did clearly discourage them, but did not dissuade them. Their loyalty was to righteousness, not to the thrill of victory. These were people who thought nothing of going to clear-cut after clear-cut, perching in trees and getting dragged off by sheriffs' deputies, getting assaulted and beaten several time a year, seeing people alongside them getting killed one by one by "accidents", knowing it might be just a matter of time before the same thing happens to them ö all to try to do something meaningful to halt the ecological holocaust.

I found myself saying to them several times, "I think you have as much or more to teach me, than I have to teach you." Such folks as these could be prophets.

But to remain prophets, they will have to remain pure from partisan hostility and anger. When I met them they were already struggling with that, and on the edge of falling. That became a central part of what we talked about, they and I.

There are many opportunities for Friends, who are free to do so, to join in such action. For older Friends to involve themselves would bring a much-needed broadening of backgrounds to the movement, and would get it listened to on a serious level by many folks who have dismissed it in the past.

ON WITNESS: A MESSAGE TO FRIENDS COMMITTEE ON UNITY WITH NATURE (FCUN)

ON WITNESS:
A MESSAGE TO FRIENDS COMMITTEE ON UNITY WITH NATURE (FCUN)