In December 1997, a 23-year-old woman named Julia “Butterfly” Hill climbed a giant redwood tree in California — a tree roughly 1,000 years old and 180 feet tall. Her goal was simple: to stop a logging company from cutting down this tree, which activists had named “Luna.” She planned to stay a few weeks.
She came down 738 days later.
For two years, Hill lived on a small tarp-covered platform, roughly six by six feet, built near the top of the tree. Supporters hauled her food up using a rope-and-pulley system. She survived some of the most violent El Niño storms on record, clinging to the platform in winds that exceeded 60 miles per hour. She slept through freezing winter nights. She endured helicopters sent by the company, floodlights aimed at her through the night, and constant psychological pressure.
Her feet did not touch the ground for two years.
Over time, her story spread across the world. She gave interviews from the treetop using a solar-powered phone and even called in to television programs. Finally, at the end of 1999, an agreement was reached with the logging company: Luna and a surrounding buffer zone would be protected.
On December 18, 1999, Hill descended in tears — and the first thing she did was kiss the ground.
But the story has a painful epilogue. About a year later, an unknown attacker cut deep into Luna’s trunk with a chainsaw. The tree did not die; experts reinforced the wound with steel brackets and special compounds. Luna still stands today — carrying both its scar and the story of the woman who saved it.
Julia Hill’s words became a symbol of the environmental movement: anyone who says one person can’t make a difference has never spent two years at the top of a tree.
