She endured loneliness and sometimes harsh weather, surviving on food hoisted to her platform 180 feet up the tree, which she named Luna. Hill’s stand captivated the news media and made her an emblem of the anti-logging movement.

It was this week in 1999 that she finally descended after reaching a deal with Pacific Lumber to protect the tree and a surrounding buffer zone.

Over time, the timber wars settled into a truce after the creation of the Headwaters Forest Reserve, comprising more than 11 square miles of protected old-growth redwoods.

Hill remained active for years in environmental causes. Lately, she’s retreated into a more private life in California. A representative didn’t respond to a message.

But Hill, now 43, spoke a few weeks ago with an Arcata radio station about her first exposure to a redwood forest when she was 23.

The daughter of a preacher, Hill said she spent a lot of time in churches.

Steel brackets were fastened to Luna after a vandal took a chainsaw to the tree. (Stuart Moskowitz)

“And yet I never really felt like church was where my spirit was spoken to,” she said. “When I was in the redwoods that day, I was like, ‘Oh, this is what God is about.’”

Hill’s story has been memorialized in books, television, films, and music. A Swedish children’s book was published this year titled “Julia räddar skogen” (“Julia saves the forest”).

Luna still stands, if injured, as it has for a millennium.

Not long after Hill ended her protest, someone made a gash in the tree with a chainsaw. Arborists bridged the cut with heavy steel brackets. The vandal was never caught.

Stuart Moskowitz, a local environmentalist who has served as caretaker for the tree, said he visited it about a month ago.

“Luna is still growing and glowing,” he said.

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