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Mar. 6th, 2006 07:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aprilstarchildSo I finished a book last night, The Tree-Sitter. I caught a review of it in the Sunday paper over a week ago and knew I wanted to read it, so when my eye caught it on my way through Powell's on Saturday, I picked it up.
I do need to get one small bitchiness out of the way: the cover photo. I've seen it before, I think in Sunset magazine. There are people who climb trees and camp in them as a hobby. That's what the cover photo is. Real tree-sits look almost nothing like that. For one, they're much more patch-work looking and usually bigger. But they have tarps over them, and buckets hanging off of them (some for food, some for waste) and they're usually more securely attached to the tree--first windy day, and the person in that thing on the bookcover is motion sick over the side--not to mention possibly falling off/out or something. Not Fun.
Found a half-way decent shot of one from underneath:
I also found some pictures from Eagle Creek, although as far as I can tell, they're from a bit before I got involved in March of 2000, over here. Oh, and I'm in this picture somewhere. I don't know where. But I remember when that was, and I remember that dog. In the upper-right corner is a form of road blockade--the "pod" is partially supported by lines going through a metal ring attached to ropes high up off the ground, and then down to a rope across the road. It's hard to explain without drawing a diagram.
Anyway. I guess they had to pick something prettier for the cover of a novel. Even Julia Butterfly's book about tree-sitting didn't have a picture of the actual sit on the cover.
On to my talking about the actual book:
To sum it up: A girl named Julie is going to college at Wellesley and falls in love with a guy named Neil. Neil's been doing research at MIT into various forest practices. He's pissed off, and rather than write dry dissertations on it, he wants to do something. By now, Julie's madly in love and just wants to go wherever he does. So, they end up in a tree-sit outside of Eugene. At first that's all they do, but there's various other forms of sabotage going on, including messing with bulldozers etc so they won't go anywhere. There's also talk of outright property destruction. Neil and another guy end up planting a bomb in an SUV lot while Julie drives, but it doesn't go off as planned in the middle of the night. When they realize it hasn't gone off, Julie harrasses Neil into getting to a payphone and calling in the bomb threat. It goes off just after they make the call, and it seriously wounds but doesn't kill a man who works there. Julie freaks out and leaves.
There's other stuff going on--Julie spends a large portion of the book talking about her mother, which actually gets kinda tedious.
I wish the book was longer. Yes, they got caught up in stuff fast, but I would've liked to have seen more character development, especially of the other activists, or just something that didn't involve Julie constantly thinking about her mother. Although I suppose that's true to life.
The author did, apparently, visit a tree-sit, judging by the acknowledgements. She got some aspects of tree-activist culture correct, like the psuedonyms. Something else she nailed on the head, is the sense of social isolation for many of them. If people are getting involved in truly illegal stuff, and some people are just tree-sitting, no one gets to know each other very well, as a defense mechanism. If I'm planning on blowing up logging equipment, the less you know about me, the better. People change psuedonyms for every action, and/or every time they write something for Earth First! Journal or Green Anarchy or whatever. Eagle Creek had a little less of that, though; I'll mention it later.
She got some stuff really wrong. I realize it's relatively minor stuff, especially plot-wise, but they're still irritating. For instance, tree-sits had vegan food. This was partially a practicality thing--no refrigeration. But many if not most tree-sitters are into animal-rights as well, it's in some ways a logical extension of their particular flavor of environmentalism. Around 90% (or more!) of the people at Eagle Creek were vegan/freegan (a freegan will eat things that aren't vegan that would otherwise be tossed out--one time, a bunch of us inhaled most of a garbage bag of pastries grabbed in a dumpster dive).
The fact also remains, that very few tree-sitters end up indulging in acts of sabotage and/or property destruction. Oh, there was lots and lots of talk about it around. And many of us read issues of Earth First! Journal, or Green Anarchy, both of which outright condoned it. But people who do that kind of thing, don't talk about it--except maybe to write anonymous articles.
The Eagle Creek campaign was a very public one, which was intentional. Some of the people in the CFA (Cascadia Forest Alliance) were media-savvy, so the Willamette Week and KBOO, and even the Oregonian and local news stations, had stuff about Eagle Creek on relatively frequently. The way it seemed to work, was that the tree-sits, and road blockades, were both a stalling tactic and a way of getting media attention. Behind all that, there were a lot of people working very hard to get the sale itself canceled, and hopefully added to the Salmon-Huckleberry Wilderness, which the tract bordered.
Now, the CFA was in theory an anarchist organization (not necessarily an oxymoron). There were no official members. Anyone could show up to the meetings, and everything was, in theory, done by consensus (heh, in that picture I'm in? During that weekend I took a class in consensus process, it's cool stuff). The CFA straddled what was a very delicate line--on the one hand, there were articles published in the Earth First! Journal, we were listed in it as a local Earth First! group, and many of the people at the action self-identified as Earth First!ers. On the other hand, there were people working the legal angle, and dressing up nice for their appearance on KATU news. And in a "group" that had no official leaders. To say it could get messy, and that there were heavy group politics, would be a fantastic understatement. Despite my involvement, I was privy to very little of this. Compared to many people, the amount of time I devoted to Eagle Creek was the blink of an eye.
Which is all a long-winded way of me of getting to: There wasn't any sabotage or property destruction going on at Eagle Creek.
To be fair: some people committed arson to some logging equipment after I was no longer involved, but I believe they actually said (in their press release or wtf-ever) that they weren't connected to the CFA. One of them was Tre Arrow, allegedly. The other two people currently in jail for it, have pointed to him. He was no longer actively involved in the CFA at that point.
The public already has a mental image of "ecoterrorists," and to many people, the slide from tree-sitting, to sabotaging equipment, to outright arson, automatically leads to actual terrorism that kills people. This book does nothing to disprove that. I realize it's fiction. I realize that some people who tree-sit have committed arson. I realize that arson, no matter how carefully planned, can indeed kill people.
But for someone like me, who still counts being eighty feet off the ground for days on end, as one of the most important and meaningful experiences of her life.... to be lumped together, again, with people who blow up SUV lots... it's frustrating. And disappointing.
Holy shit I wandered around a lot there mentally. I hope it still makes sense.
One other thing: The author of this novel is also a poet, and you can tell. She writes truly lovely descriptions, especially of the forest itself, and what it feels like to be in a tree-sit. *le sigh*
I do need to get one small bitchiness out of the way: the cover photo. I've seen it before, I think in Sunset magazine. There are people who climb trees and camp in them as a hobby. That's what the cover photo is. Real tree-sits look almost nothing like that. For one, they're much more patch-work looking and usually bigger. But they have tarps over them, and buckets hanging off of them (some for food, some for waste) and they're usually more securely attached to the tree--first windy day, and the person in that thing on the bookcover is motion sick over the side--not to mention possibly falling off/out or something. Not Fun.
Found a half-way decent shot of one from underneath:
I also found some pictures from Eagle Creek, although as far as I can tell, they're from a bit before I got involved in March of 2000, over here. Oh, and I'm in this picture somewhere. I don't know where. But I remember when that was, and I remember that dog. In the upper-right corner is a form of road blockade--the "pod" is partially supported by lines going through a metal ring attached to ropes high up off the ground, and then down to a rope across the road. It's hard to explain without drawing a diagram.
Anyway. I guess they had to pick something prettier for the cover of a novel. Even Julia Butterfly's book about tree-sitting didn't have a picture of the actual sit on the cover.
On to my talking about the actual book:
To sum it up: A girl named Julie is going to college at Wellesley and falls in love with a guy named Neil. Neil's been doing research at MIT into various forest practices. He's pissed off, and rather than write dry dissertations on it, he wants to do something. By now, Julie's madly in love and just wants to go wherever he does. So, they end up in a tree-sit outside of Eugene. At first that's all they do, but there's various other forms of sabotage going on, including messing with bulldozers etc so they won't go anywhere. There's also talk of outright property destruction. Neil and another guy end up planting a bomb in an SUV lot while Julie drives, but it doesn't go off as planned in the middle of the night. When they realize it hasn't gone off, Julie harrasses Neil into getting to a payphone and calling in the bomb threat. It goes off just after they make the call, and it seriously wounds but doesn't kill a man who works there. Julie freaks out and leaves.
There's other stuff going on--Julie spends a large portion of the book talking about her mother, which actually gets kinda tedious.
I wish the book was longer. Yes, they got caught up in stuff fast, but I would've liked to have seen more character development, especially of the other activists, or just something that didn't involve Julie constantly thinking about her mother. Although I suppose that's true to life.
The author did, apparently, visit a tree-sit, judging by the acknowledgements. She got some aspects of tree-activist culture correct, like the psuedonyms. Something else she nailed on the head, is the sense of social isolation for many of them. If people are getting involved in truly illegal stuff, and some people are just tree-sitting, no one gets to know each other very well, as a defense mechanism. If I'm planning on blowing up logging equipment, the less you know about me, the better. People change psuedonyms for every action, and/or every time they write something for Earth First! Journal or Green Anarchy or whatever. Eagle Creek had a little less of that, though; I'll mention it later.
She got some stuff really wrong. I realize it's relatively minor stuff, especially plot-wise, but they're still irritating. For instance, tree-sits had vegan food. This was partially a practicality thing--no refrigeration. But many if not most tree-sitters are into animal-rights as well, it's in some ways a logical extension of their particular flavor of environmentalism. Around 90% (or more!) of the people at Eagle Creek were vegan/freegan (a freegan will eat things that aren't vegan that would otherwise be tossed out--one time, a bunch of us inhaled most of a garbage bag of pastries grabbed in a dumpster dive).
The fact also remains, that very few tree-sitters end up indulging in acts of sabotage and/or property destruction. Oh, there was lots and lots of talk about it around. And many of us read issues of Earth First! Journal, or Green Anarchy, both of which outright condoned it. But people who do that kind of thing, don't talk about it--except maybe to write anonymous articles.
The Eagle Creek campaign was a very public one, which was intentional. Some of the people in the CFA (Cascadia Forest Alliance) were media-savvy, so the Willamette Week and KBOO, and even the Oregonian and local news stations, had stuff about Eagle Creek on relatively frequently. The way it seemed to work, was that the tree-sits, and road blockades, were both a stalling tactic and a way of getting media attention. Behind all that, there were a lot of people working very hard to get the sale itself canceled, and hopefully added to the Salmon-Huckleberry Wilderness, which the tract bordered.
Now, the CFA was in theory an anarchist organization (not necessarily an oxymoron). There were no official members. Anyone could show up to the meetings, and everything was, in theory, done by consensus (heh, in that picture I'm in? During that weekend I took a class in consensus process, it's cool stuff). The CFA straddled what was a very delicate line--on the one hand, there were articles published in the Earth First! Journal, we were listed in it as a local Earth First! group, and many of the people at the action self-identified as Earth First!ers. On the other hand, there were people working the legal angle, and dressing up nice for their appearance on KATU news. And in a "group" that had no official leaders. To say it could get messy, and that there were heavy group politics, would be a fantastic understatement. Despite my involvement, I was privy to very little of this. Compared to many people, the amount of time I devoted to Eagle Creek was the blink of an eye.
Which is all a long-winded way of me of getting to: There wasn't any sabotage or property destruction going on at Eagle Creek.
To be fair: some people committed arson to some logging equipment after I was no longer involved, but I believe they actually said (in their press release or wtf-ever) that they weren't connected to the CFA. One of them was Tre Arrow, allegedly. The other two people currently in jail for it, have pointed to him. He was no longer actively involved in the CFA at that point.
The public already has a mental image of "ecoterrorists," and to many people, the slide from tree-sitting, to sabotaging equipment, to outright arson, automatically leads to actual terrorism that kills people. This book does nothing to disprove that. I realize it's fiction. I realize that some people who tree-sit have committed arson. I realize that arson, no matter how carefully planned, can indeed kill people.
But for someone like me, who still counts being eighty feet off the ground for days on end, as one of the most important and meaningful experiences of her life.... to be lumped together, again, with people who blow up SUV lots... it's frustrating. And disappointing.
Holy shit I wandered around a lot there mentally. I hope it still makes sense.
One other thing: The author of this novel is also a poet, and you can tell. She writes truly lovely descriptions, especially of the forest itself, and what it feels like to be in a tree-sit. *le sigh*
