Julia Butterfly Hill, Liberator

Introduction to a Talk
    
 To Fall Passionately in Love With a Tree  

(The poem that goes here; though perhaps this is not its title: in Her Blue Body)
 
    
 All the trees on earth have heard about Julia Butterfly Hill.  They are singing praise songs to her; they are weeping at mention of her name; they are waving their arms in anticipation of the change that’s going to come.  For them, she is Abraham Lincoln.  She is Gandhi and Martin Luther King.  For me as well, she is a liberator.  By her act of saving Luna, sitting watch in her branches for over two years, she has become the catalyst by which we can liberate our hidden, forbidden awareness of our kinship with nature.  After what she did to save one tree, nothing we do to protect any part of nature will seem odd.
  
 When I was a child, I fell in love with a tree.  It was a companion for much of my youth.  After I left home, and it was struck by lightening, and later died, I grieved.  I am not the only one.

©2008 Alice Walker