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Fifteen stories above the ground, Butterfly flips through mail from fans in Sausalito, Pensacola, Beaverton, and from a tree-sitter in Tasmania who calls himself Hector the Protector. "I've only had time to answer four letters today," she frets. Besides her cell phone, pager and walkie-talkie, Butterfly also has a radio and a solar-powered battery charger. She reads her poetry, written on the inside of Ronzoni pasta cartons, and tells of how one night El Nino's freezing rains and 40-m.p.h. winds nearly tore her off the 8-ft. by 8-ft. platform. "I thought I was going to die," she recalls.
But she hugged the trunk, and "the tree spoke to me in a beautiful, very calming, powerful female voice. She said, 'Julia, think of the trees.' I said, 'Of course--what do you think I'm doing up here?' She said, 'No. Think of how the trees allow their branches to blow in the wind. I'll do everything to save you.'"
Five miles away, at Pacific Lumber headquarters, spokeswoman Mary Bullwinkel deadpans, "I don't believe trees can talk." Butterfly's redwood tree is a valuable hostage; if it were sawed into boards for luxury-home paneling or outdoor decks, it would be worth a six-figure sum. And trees like that translate into jobs for loggers. When the Eureka Times-Standard, the local paper, printed stories about Butterfly last month, it was showered with complaints. "We write about rapists, but it doesn't mean we support them," huffed editor David Little in a column defending his news judgment. "Lighten up, folks. A woman is living in a tree. Isn't that the least bit interesting?"