July 6, 2005

CHAIN LINK:

That Tree Stood for So Much: Having seen a fellow protester die, 'Shunka' tried to build meaning from loss by saving one redwood from loggers. His fight goes on. (Lee Romney, July 6, 2005, LA Times)

Jason Wilson was just 21 when a Lakota elder gave him a spirit name.

Wilson, she said, was destined to carry a heavy weight. He would need the medicine of the name she offered, she told him, "to carry that weight in a good way, a strong way and as far as it needs to be carried."

Three years later, on a September day in 1998, the bearded redhead from Missouri lay in a fetal curl on the floor of a Humboldt County forest, rocking and sobbing in the duff. Next to him was 24-year-old David Nathan "Gypsy" Chain, his head cracked open by the blow of a tree felled by an enraged logger.

Chain had inspired Wilson to disrupt old-growth logging on private land. It was Wilson's first act of civil disobedience. Now, Chain was dead.

The legacy of that death, Wilson soon decided, was the weight the Lakota elder had warned of. He vowed to carry it with honor. From that day on, "Shunka" would be his forest name, joining the list of adopted monikers that give Humboldt's logging protesters a blend of anonymity and fairy tale folly.

Shunka's long struggle to redress Chain's death would depend, more than anything, on a 700-year-old tree the protesters had named Aradia.


Do you suppose they realize that if they weren't so weird and anti-human more folks would support them?

Posted by Orrin Judd at July 6, 2005 6:08 AM
Comments

Being wierd and anti-human is the point.

Posted by: Brandon at July 6, 2005 9:45 AM

Right on - to 'love' a tree means never having a real relationship. It also means never growing up.

Posted by: jim hamlen at July 6, 2005 10:37 AM

Disordered love leads them to worship nature rather than be its good steward.

Posted by: Luciferous at July 6, 2005 11:06 AM

why don't they raise money and buy the land the trees are on ?

Posted by: cjm at July 6, 2005 11:12 AM

They make it sound like the "enraged logger" attacked the guy with a tree. Why didn't he just get out of the way?

Posted by: kynna at July 6, 2005 2:02 PM

What's that old song that starts: "Chain, Chain, Chain . . ."

Posted by: AC at July 6, 2005 3:06 PM

did they bury the dead hippie, or just compost him ?

Posted by: cjm at July 6, 2005 5:11 PM

In 1997, a guy in British Columbia cut down a huge 300 year old Sitka Spruce ... apparently the ONLY Golden Sitka in the whole freaking world ... to protest logging.

Posted by: ghostcat at July 6, 2005 10:27 PM

AC: Chain of Fools. Queen of Soul.

"if they weren't so weird and anti-human" they would be doing something else.

Posted by: Robert Schwartz at July 7, 2005 4:47 PM
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