E-Mail This Article to a Friend On top of the world with Earth First! Environmentalists had never before used direct action to stop clear-cutting on the East Coast. Although they lost their first battle — at Wachusett Mountain Ski Area — they feel they made gains for their movement. BY MICHAEL BLANDING

AFTER 47 DAYS up in the trees of the Wachusett Mountain State Reservation, two Earth First! tree sitters came down from their 90-foot perches at midnight Tuesday. Wachusett Mountain Ski Area workers had cut down some of the sitters’ supplies and punctured their plastic water bottles. Amid a raging rain storm, the two members of the direct-action environmental group Earth First! finally climbed down.

Dandi Lyons, who first went up in the trees on August 1, said there were a number of reasons why she decided to come down. Not the least of which was that the action was no longer making much difference. "From the beginning we felt that we would be up there as long as it was an effective tactic," she says. "But they had cut a large number of forest trees around us, and since we were no longer effective we came down."

Even though all of the trees slated for removal will be brought down — if they haven’t already been felled — the local chapter of Earth First!, which organized the action, considers its first East Coast tree-sitting action a huge success. "We have won more of a victory than we even realize," says Jason Kotoch, who helped found the local Earth First! chapter. From the start, he says, activists knew that the trees were going to come down. "But the fact that this was the very first tree-sit campaign that ever took place in the Northeast is exciting. We have created an entire community in the Northeast of people who are committed to practicing this kind of nonviolent direct action."

He adds that he expects more and more people will begin "using this kind of tactic to protect public land from private developers."

So, how did all this happen? To understand, we need to go back to the beginning.

DENSE TREE COVER blocks out the mid-August afternoon sun as we hike down a dirt road into the heart of Wachusett Mountain State Reservation. It’s less suspicious to hike in this back way, the forest defenders say. Carrying jugs of water and backpacks full of climbing gear and food, the four of them range in age from late teens to early 20s. Before the day is done, one of them will be awaiting nightfall sitting 90 feet high in the top of a northern red oak.

"We’ve been rallying and handing out flyers for years," says Kotoch, an earnest 23-year-old in a sleeveless forest-green T-shirt who goes by the "forest name" Panther. Since 1998, he and other members of the local chapter of Earth First! had been publicizing the threat to the mountain with demonstrations and grassroots organizing. But that eventually changed — they were ready to be more confrontational. "We wanted to escalate the situation," he says with a self-conscious laugh as we walk down the trail.

As we emerge from the forest, crickets are chirping in the grass that covers the overgrown moguls of the Hitchcock trail, which sees hundreds of thousands of skiers ply its icy surface every winter. The towering poles of a chair lift stand out against the evening sky, while another lift can be seen farther ahead, on the other side of a swath of trees. Panther calls out a word of greeting to the trees as we approach, and an answering shout can be heard dimly from within.

Plunging under the dark canopy, we hike through undergrowth of fallen logs and hobble bush to the base of a towering red oak. Mosquitoes buzz ravenously around us as we crane our necks to see a platform covered by a bright-blue tarp high above. A dozen yards up the slope, past a line of surveyor's stakes with fluorescent orange markers, is another platform in another tree, with a huge banner strung beneath it that reads EARTH FIRST! GREEDY $KI AREA LAST. A network of ropes connects the two trees to dozens of others, so that cutting any of them would endanger the lives of the activists sitting in them.

Tree-sits have been a tactic for years out West, where they have staved off dozens of logging campaigns from the Rockies to the Cascades. Most famously, a young woman named Julia Butterfly sat for 738 days in a redwood tree named Luna in Northern California, until loggers agreed to spare the forest. Despite its prominence as a tactic in other parts of the country, however, tree-sitting hasn’t been used on the East Coast until now. And unlike in Western forests, where thousands of acres are at stake, this action is taking place on a decidedly smaller piece of land.

While the land is owned by the state, this part of the reservation is leased by the Wachusett Mountain Associates (WMA), who are expanding their ski area by 12.5 acres. To do that, however, they must clear-cut forest that environmentalists say protects the largest stand of old-growth trees in Eastern Massachusetts — a northern-red-oak woodland with trees more than 300 years old. Other environmental organizations, including the Sierra Club, have fought the case in court for years, but now Panther and members of Earth First! are resisting by more direct means.

Taking over in the closer tree tonight is Lizzie Parker, a petite 21-year-old sporting a halter top and freckles. Originally from the North Shore of Massachusetts, she came here all the way from Texas when she heard the cry go out on the Internet. "If it were anywhere else, I don’t think I would have come. This is where my heart is," she says, strapping herself into a climbing harness. She scowls and adds, "It’s hard to say without sounding cheesy."

Admittedly terrified of heights, Parker starts a slow hand-over-hand climb up the rope, spotted by a beard-and-bandana-wearing activist who goes by the name Raven. She pauses for only a moment when she gets to the lone branch sticking out some 40 feet up the tree trunk, then continues up to push off with her feet against the bark to clear the side of the six-foot-wide platform and scramble over.

At the base of the other tree, Emily Reno, a Fitchburg-native with a bleached-blond bob, uses ropes and a pulley to lift hot vegan soup and fresh fruits and vegetables up to Lyons. During the course of August thunderstorms, she watched lightning glance off the tops of the chair lifts, and felt the tree sway precariously in the wind. For bug repellent, she had only a spray laced with citronella. "That’s why I’m covered with calamine lotion," she says cheerily. Despite the apparent discomfort, however, her spirits are high. "Once I stopped fighting to be dry or safe or anything we want to be in the civilized world, it’s been just beautiful," says Lyons. For her, the fact that the forest is so small makes it even more worthy of protection. "People want to protect the trees out West because they are so tall. But out in the East we have even fewer native forests. To threaten this to put up a few ski trails for one family to make money is a moral wrong."

The root of the issue, say the forest defenders, is that the ski area shouldn’t be able to cut down the trees on what is technically public land. "As long as the ski area has a right to be here 24 hours a day, citizens of the state should have a right to be on their land for 24 hours a day," says Panther. "It’s public property, and we intend to treat it that way."