#27 The Warbler in a Tree

             Last week I interviewed Warbler, the woman sitting 60 feet up in a Ponderosa pine tree just off Highway 101 south of Willits. Why did she decide to go live on a platform 4’ by 8’ in the winter? And how is the town of Willits reacting?
            The latter question is driving me to distraction as I begin to investigate the suitability of a gigantic cement Bypass as a response to the problem of traffic and pollution in Willits. With a sign of protest, I stand by the freeway where construction is slated to start. Over the ninety minutes, I counted the responses by passing motorists: 3 out of 4 honked and waved, seemingly showing support of the protest; 1 in 4 gave me a thumbs down, flipped me off, or screamed an obscenity. So while this unscientific survey indicates more support for the protest than support for the Bypass, those enraged by the protest have their perspective, too.
            The issues are long and complex to confront. For over twenty years the Bypass has been under discussion and argument, including in a court case now. I have lots of homework to do to understand all the history, sub- issues and perspectives.
           Essentially, the problem is that Highway 101 just south of Willits becomes a two-lane road and heads through Willits on its Main Street. As a result, all kinds of tourists, huge freight trucks, and local traffic are vying for space for three miles going through Willits. Many of us learn which side streets will get us around the worst of the traffic, but during the commute hours and the season of tourists heading up and down 101, we can spend long minutes of crawling along. Not 45 or 60 minutes, as in Bay Area or Sacramento area traffic that I’m familiar with, but ten or fifteen minutes to get through town on 101.
        The other crucial problem is the by-product of pollution created by the idling cars and trucks which can last longer for hours in the peak tourist season as the slow snake of traffic winds through town. Willits residents are rightfully concerned about having to breathe the fumes day after day, hour after hour.
        So CalTrans and the city Powers-That-Be devised the Bypass. I’ll save for another time the history of the various forms that the proposed Bypass has taken, including alternative routes that seemingly have far less impact on the local environment. Those impacts I’ll also discuss in coming posts.
        But for now, let’s look up this tree and learn about the woman who has captured the hearts and raised the ire of many Willits residents.

“Warbler,” her adopted name for this tree sit, comes from Colorado. Aged 24, she has been in Willits for four years, living on a small farm where she has been milking goats and cultivating organic produce. Last year she became involved in the dispute over the Bypass when she learned how the proposed freeway would destroy the farmland very near where she herself was living and working.

         The Bypass will require the drilling of 55,000 holes 85 feet deep by a couple of feet wide to compact the dirt and pump out, by this force, water in the aquifer of Little Lake Valley. Willits lies in this valley, which is a watershed for the Eel River, collecting water from the surrounding hills and mountains, and sending the water further south. The fear is the extraction of so much water and the impact of the cement viaduct over a few miles through the valley will greatly reduce the natural resource so valuable to local farmers—which is one reason why the Farm Bureau is a party to a court case that sought an injunction against the Bypass.
        Concerned for the agricultural and environmental impacts of the massive structure, Warbler and other activists from the group Save Our Little Lake Valley (SOLLV) sought a way to prevent the imposition of the Bypass. Warbler took the advice of the Cascadia Forest Defenders and decided to take the dire step into a tree top as a way to bring attention to the dire consequences of the Bypass.  “We were running out of options to prevent the Bypass, and CalTrans was ready to start chopping down trees.”
         When I asked her what kind of sacrifice this is for her, Warbler said that she hardly thought it about because she’s used to living simply and she is easily adaptable. “People come every day to help take care of me—bringing food and taking care of my needs.”
        She emphasized that this tree sit is not nearly as romantic as that of Julia Butterfly who sat in a huge redwood tree for over 700 days in order to prevent the chainsaw from taking down that old growth tree and those nearby. Warbler’s tree is much smaller in diameter, and she has fewer options for creating a variety of “living” spaces among its branches than the gigantic redwood tree offered Julia. Worst of all, being only 50 feet from the four-lane highway, she endures constant noise from the traffic. But she is determined to make the best of it.
        I will return with more of the issues that frame the Bypass battle. It involves a common array of players in many social struggles: economic scarcity; the roles of big money, status, and power; the conflict between environmentalists and those seeking to capitalize on natural resources; health concern; battle fatigue; and generous doses of self-righteousness from every side—from those holding up signs to those flipping off the sign holders.
        The huge machine of CalTrans, slated to get $300 million to create the Bypass, is the favored winner of this battle. So why bother sitting in a tree or standing by the road?
        I’m gnawing on that question daily.

#26 Thinking Urbanly, Acting Locally

A woman sits in a Ponderosa pine tree on a hilltop overlooking the loud freeway of 101. Warbler, she calls herself. She is perched on a slight wooden frame, perhaps 50 feet up, there to protest the looming devastation that will be the Willits Bypass if CalTrans gets its way (and the way of those Willits residents who have been convinced that the Bypass is useful or who simply don’t know or don’t care).

I’ve been one of the residents who didn’t know what the implications of the Bypass are for the Little Lake Valley and its watershed. For twenty years, various local organizations have contested the Bypas. The case against CalTrans is now in court, to be heard in June of this year.
 






However, construction suddenly threatened to start at the end of January, including the topping of these humongous oak trees down to 40 feet, before bird nesting might start in February. That was when Warbler climbed the tree.

And that was when this forest woman, yours truly, decided to get back in gear, not only with this blog but with connection to local life in the community down the mountain. The Urban Mountain Woman is back!

Since last July, I’ve been busy working as an editor on book projects, traveling to the Bay Area often and even to Southern California and Arizona both for work-related interviews and to connect with elders, family, and friends.

 I’ve also been settling into my many routines on the mountain: ashes in, wood out for the woodstove; water in for the solar batteries (see Blog #22 “Solar Powered”), pee bucket rinsed out from the composting toilet (see Blog #21 “Not for the Squeamish”); light the candle to type out this missive since the sun was blocked by fog today. I’ve found wonderfully epiphanal moments in which I’ve been able to disconnect from the larger world and focus on the immediate world around me, something I haven’t done much of in years, if ever. Hiking these here hills and creating new trails out of old lumber roads have provided much needed respite (see Blog #25 “Taking Care of the Forest, The Forest Taking of Care Me”).

 As I told a friend the other day, after tending to the gardens of students before me day after day for so many years, I’ve needed to tend to the forest before me, and here find some rejuvenation. As Voltaire wrote in Candide, after the hero’s journeys and misadventures far and wide, in the end, “we must cultivate our garden.”

Then what? Rabbi Hillel asked the questions that make us seek a balanced approach to giving and taking:
          If I am not for myself, who will be for me.
          If I am only for myself, what am I?
          If not now, when?
Some of us make the betterment of society a way of life—whether it be choosing to work in schools, clinics, or social support agencies, or volunteering to clean up beaches, or becoming a civil servant. That way of life can be fulfilling, yet it may also become draining. Knowing when to take a break from the pressures that consume us (if we can, and if we can convince ourselves that we can) is vital. I shared in my blog post (#24) called “Ch-ch-ch-changing” my own struggle with giving and doing too much over nearly three decades. Hence, I followed the call to build trails in the forest rather than assign yet more homework in classrooms.

Once rejuvenated, finding a way to re-enter the fray when ready is also vital. As an urban teacher all these years with a conscience for social justice, my contributions to the “betterment of society” have focused on what I could do in classrooms that would help students coming from often disenfranchised backgrounds to feel that they had the support they needed to achieve a college education and a better life, as a result. Here I am in the woods. Now what?

Now I heed the voices that have accompanied me since the movements of the 1960s took root in the 1970s and truly blossomed in the 1980s, reduced to one apt bumper sticker slogan: Think globally, act locally.

A Voice From the Tree
Warbler’s life in the tree has moved me greatly, her spare life on a mere piece of plywood. And so many other local voices that are rising in unison against this Bypass. The voices of the local Pomo Band of Native Californians who protest the uprooting of grasses that supply their baskets, not to mention the further desecration of their homeland. The voices of ranchers and farmers whose land was taken by eminent domain with no heed for the needs they have to keep their businesses viable. The voices of local activists who pointed out the stupidity of the state plan in relation to actual traffic implications examined in expensive studies. The voices of environmentalists raising the alarm about the impact of 55,000 drill holes 3 feet wide and 85 feet deep on what has been a vital part of the Pacific migratory bird flyway. After all, it isn’t called Little Lake Valley for nothing!

These are the voices I will now start listening to more ardently, all the while examining how this state agency has been able to have its way, who decides what is best for a community, and how this struggle between cement and cars, on the one hand, versus just one hundred voices lifting up might become a force of life and light in this valley.






If it just takes one tree sitter to rile us to action, who knows? Stay tuned. I interviewed Warbler and will share what the Pomo say, as well as the many other voices now speaking out.