Ron Huber Jail Diary , Albany, Oregon1985
The following is transcribed from jailhouse stationary at the Linn County Jail in Albany Oregon, while awaiting arraignment.

Writing from the County Jail, where I've been taken after getting wrestled partway into a crane platform by deputies Dave Freeman and Chris Ives, and brought back to earth forcibly.

The day had begun fairly quietly, then the deputies and cohorts showed up along with a cherrypicker. I prepared for action, clearing the decks and and hooking into the tree for extra support. The picker rose, Chistianson running around excitedly telling me that I might as well come down. I said, "No way. What's he gonna do? I'm not climbing into that thing....tell you what, I'll make him some tea but he'll have to bring his own cup."

Christianson sputtered something, and they sent it up, a bespectacled young fellow with billed cap, short beard, rising toward me.

I jerked all my climbing ropes up and waited, resting on my haunches, heart pounding. He stopped about 8 feet below me, seemingly for a final look before rising up to me. We looked at each other....

"Too short."

'What?" Christiansen yelled.

"TOO SHORT!" picker guy yelled back, already lowering himself down.

A chorus of SHITs and guffaws; Christiansen turned red, so red I could tell through my binoculars. The deputies covered their grins with their hands as the defeated cherry picker lowered back down: I roared out a triumphant "Earth First!: One, Freddies: Zero!" howl that echoed across the valley.

The good ol' boys chuckled, I swigged some Southern Comfort, waving the bottle to the delight of the crew. As the cherrypicker slunk off, I joked with the freds and deputies. Christianson finally left after warning me about thunderstorms to the southwest.

Quiet. My support group, Dale and Anny, were incapable of rousing themselves and going to the car to let people know the freddie assault was on. No CD training.

Finally Wenatchee crow-cawed from the road and the elf's horn tooted. Dael got his ears on, told them what was going on...other people began to arrive: a whole row of Earth First! vehicles!

My heart soared. Allies! Told 'em how it looked like the freddies'd be back, Christiansen having returned briefly with a measuring tool/scope. He'd looked chagrined when I told him I could scamper up higher at will.

I told my affinity group folks I had no etriers (rope climbing grips) just some straps & prussiks. Lee Few instructed me in jury rigging some etriers; he warned me to knot the rope's end to make it "bombproof", far beyond safe.Well, okay....

For suddenly far far down the road I could hear an eldritch howling, like an angry implacable midguard seerpent. The moan echoed off Jumpoff Joe and Soapgrass Mountains

Suddenly, Deputy Freeman got out of his truck. "Ron, they're coming to take you down now, so just don't do anything to put yourself at risk of dying."

"Yeah, okay Dave", I told him, knotting prussiks into loops for my boots. I hooked my tangled skein of climbing rope to a sling on the mighty branch overhead. using a figure 8 knot and tugged it tight. Bombproof? Well...lessee. I looped one prussik around the rope three times, yanked it tight, hooked a deadman loop around my boot and stomped down on it. The prussik held, tightening up like it was supposed to, but the climbing rope yielded a foot, tightening up the sling looped around the bough Whew. But it held!

Hooked up the other jury-rigged etrier tested it: okay! Well, shit.... put on a third one, attached to my harness: safety. a 4th prussik went to one of my tree spikes I'd hammered in more than a month earlier--in case the branch gave way.

Doooooooooooommm, howed the monster coming up Squaw Creek Road. It was still a mile away. I yelled to the others "Its coming!" They scrambled into good vantage points, took out their cameras, etc. Party Time!

Took a quick look around my good treeshipYggdrasil: Banners flapping distractingly, bark chunks to crumble into a blinding dust, deadly looking grapple of 4 long spikes knotted onto stout rope to grab the crane.

A caravan of trucks rolls upshut her down maybe.....? Water, more cord, a sleeping bag. Everything else, guitar, food, materiel, was lashed to the climbing rope below my prussiks. I'd drag it up after me once I'd ascended to the branch....

But should I go up there? This single point suspension platform's as maneuverable as hell....up on the branch I'm stationary....we'll see.

A caravan of trucks rolls up, the servants of the noisy beast still far below down the canyon. Chrstiansen hopped out of his dark blue Chevy 4x4 station wagon and yelled,"Come on down NOW, Ron! Its all over. We've got a crane higher than the tree. So just lower yourself down now and spare yourself some trouble."

"Hell, Christianson, I said. If they're bringing a crane I can get a free ride down anyhow, right?"

He sputtered more in the same vein. Finally sick of his voice, I shouted, "Would you shut the fuck up already? You're distracting me and that ain't no joke up here, you understand?"

I nervously checked and rechecked my ropes and cords. A brief "safety meeting" (smoking a joint )lying flat on the platform facing the papery tree bark, reassured me; I breathed deep, stretched. The curious eyes of the Willies, Freds and deputies, many of them clicking away with their cameras.

Showtime.

The eldritch howler hove into view: a telescoping crane, ten wheels or so, tiny glassed-in cab, wrecking ball and hook dangling on the end of the black iron crane.

Christiansen was fairly skipping about with excitement. "See! SEE! Its bigger than your tree! Now come down!"

"Jesus fucking christ!" I thought, that things probably big enough to grab the tree, pull it out and take it down to the jail!"

It was the Midgard serpent: oily black length coming to assault my Ygdrassil, my World Tree: Ragnarok!

It crawled up the curving road through the clearcut, howling till I couldn't hear either my affinity group OR the freddies.

Finally it was abreast of my tree. Christiansen waited until it grunted one last time and went silent, when with a triumphant grin he gave me one last chance "to skedaddle".

"And if I don't?" I asked, swinging easy on my tree. "Gonna call my mommy?"

"We'll send some people up there to kick your ass!"

Deputy Freeman looked pained. He and Deputy Ives had been tapped for the honor of bringing me down.

Remember the Santiam!" I yelled back My support folk over in the forest cheered wildly. I grinned in spite of myself. This was funner than shit! Tried to think of some more potent quote, but then Ives and Freeman clambered into the crane cage and were raised toward me.

"Be careful there, buddies," as the crane's serpent head neared the tree, the two cops still far below in their box.

"Oh hell," I said, and tossed my light grappel up into the monster's pulley system. It snagged, tangled.

"Look out!" I barked, frantically waving at the rope. The cops looked surprised. They backed off the crane arm a pinch and the deputies pulled the rope free.

The crane swung above me next; this time when the wrecking ball/hook came past me, I grabbed the cotter pin holding the cage secure. It was loose. I shook it, showed 'em I could snatch it off _real easy_, and Ives frantically signaled the blond crane operator to move the thing away from me I wouldn't have REALLY yanked it out. That'd've put my buddies Freeman and Ives in danger. No violence, here, folks.

They decided to rush me. The box was raised to my level and swung over at me! Freeman grabbed at my platform, I entrusted myself to the fates and stepped off the platform, dangling 80 feet or so in the air on only etrier stirrups and harness, and yanked hard at my platform's northern suspension lines.

Like a dream, the platform rose to vertical, interposing it self between me and the gaping deputies: Fort Millenium!

Their assault stymied, the deputies decided to parley. We peeked around the edge of the door at each other, broke into silly sweaty grins.

"Look here, Ron," Deputy Dave said, his own knuckles white around the bars of his crane cage, "here's what we're going to do."

(No way, Jose'" I thought to myself, checking my prussiks.)

"...and we'll go down to the ground. The forest service will cite you for being in a closed area, and I'll arrest you for criminal trespass 2. You'll be released in Albany for $50 bond. Your stuff will be taken down safely."

"and the tree?" I asked, slapping her flank posessively. "They gonna kill her, right?"

Deputy Dave said "Yeah, afraid so."

"Well dang it, I'm not up here for fun, you know."

"I know, I know," he said. Chris Ives, helmeted, watched me. Damn it he was familiar with climbig gear, because when I "adjusted" my prussiks so's I could head for the branch above, he ratted on me to Dave, who got a hurt look on his sunglassed face.

"OK guys...uh... about what you said: federal citation, criminal trespass, my stuff taken down before...whatever, I gotta discuss with my support crew." I waved over at them. They whistled and howled. Animals.

At first Dave wouldn't go for it. I told him we were an affinity group and I COULDN'T do anything without consulting them. He shrugged.

I started yelling over to them. The crane jockey, wise ass, evved his engine, drowning out my voice. I twisted round in my harness. "Shut that fucker down, you four eyed sonafabitch!" I screamed, tossing a note of panic into my voice.

Deputy Dave saw my gesture He turned to Chris, who flipped on his radio and spoke curtly into it. The motor quickly revved down, shut off. I hooted at my support folks, wave a fist, told them of the deputy's offer. They said, "Have him put it in writing!"

I flashed a V for Victory sign. More hoots. I roared back, a grizzly growl that echoed off Soapgrass and up and down Squaw Creek. As it dies down I noticed the cops and others below staring at me. "That's a secret Earth First! code", I told them. They nodded seriously.

It took 45 minutes to get Deputy Dave to agree to write the list of promises. The sun was creeping down toward the horizon and he was getting desperate to get me down before dark. He even threw in an agreement to allow the Earth First! forces to take away my platform and other stuff, without the freddies getting to paw through my belongings. He finally gave it to me; I took it on a piece of wood I stretched over to them from behind my wooden wall.

I waved it to the EF!ers Yelled the facts at them. they conferred. Lee shouted back that if it didn't make any difference, "and your straps are bombproof...you might consider staying up there!"

"That's easy for them to say, Ron" Deputy Freeman said. "Look. They are down on the ground. This is a movie to them."

Yeah, Ron," Deputy Ives said, his earnest face dripping sweat. "There's three people in trouble here: you, me and Dave. We don't want to be up here, I want to go home."

"Me too, Ron," Dep Dave said. "I've been up since dawn, and now" , they both looked at their electric watches, "its seven fortysix pm."

"Now let's cut the games. You HAVE to come down. Its my job to getcha down. I don't particularly want to be up here. I want to be with my wife. So let's have a decision here." He put on a somber expression. Ives' face put on a poker expression, too.

I swung toward the Earth Forces, keeping the platform between me and the deputies on their crane basket. The sky was coloring. The shadow of my tree fell across the clearcut, over to the yet-living Forest, as if the Tree's spirit was trying to blend in with the rest of the trees.

I looked to the four directions: thousands of living trees to the south and west, savagely scalped Sheep Creek and Harter Mountain to the North; to the east, freshly shorn Squaw Creek's stacks of "PUM" (Piled Unutilizable material) gave mute evidence of Unit 6's fate to be: death of Ygdrassil and the neighboring tree that was cabled to it, the dragging of the tree bodies to the loading dock for transport to Willamette's pulp mills, bulldozing of the trees' leafy guts into crematorium pyres, and finally the "firemen", like the firemen of Ray Bradbury's 'Fahrenheit 451' would appear, tanks of kerosene on theirbacks, and torch the unit, killing off the remaining biosphere: the shrubs, the herbs, mosses, fungi, insects, mice, birds injured by falling trees, reptiles, thousands upon thousands of organisms seared and choked to death so that a few years later the freds could have a tree farm planted, replacing 1000's of species intricately organized into a living Forest entity with a plantation of enslaved douglas fir clones, like replacing a zoo with a chicken coop.

No fucking way. I waved Dave's note at my allies, then slowly, deliberately stuck a corner of it in my mouth and chewed it up until the whole note was in my mouth, a sodden inky blob of woodfiber.

Spat it into the air and launched into Phase 2: Ronbo's Last Stand!