Currently offering: rent-free co-op housing in upper
and middle canopy condos, 150-230 ft. above reality, with suspended
sidewalks winding between 500/600/700-year-old Doug fir and hemlock
trees.
* from a poster by
Red
Cloud Thunder, a group
protesting the Clark
Timber Sale
near Eugene,
Ore.
It’s amazing what gets
done in treetops these days. Julia Butterfly, who’s spent more than
a year and a half in the branches of an old-growth redwood in
northern California, has created a one-woman media empire with her
well-used cell phone. Now, an Earth First!-related group in Eugene,
Ore., Red Cloud Thunder, has published its fourth issue of a
20-page “zine called Expletive deleted. The hand-written and
hand-copied pamphlet reports on the 18 months (and counting) that
the group’s members have spent perched high in the Willamette
National Forest. They’re protesting the 96-acre Clark Timber Sale,
a chunk of old growth that the Forest Service auctioned off in
March 1998 under the Northwest Forest Plan. In Expletive deleted,
writers who call themselves Squirrel, Wood, Grasshopper and Nettle,
tell of their run-ins with Forest Service police, berate the
establishment in prose and verse, and contribute musings from their
many months spent “above reality.” The pamphlet is blurry and
overwrought, of course, but it’s also got a smarty-pants sense of
humor and a dose of creative, low-tech
determination.
For a free copy or for more
information about Red Cloud Thunder, write to Expletive deleted,
P.O. Box 11122, Eugene, OR 97440 (541/684-8977).
* Michelle Nijhuis
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Up in the air.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
