REDWAY, Calif. - She cried for joy the day her feet sank into the Northern California mud after 738 days in the branches of a mighty redwood. Six months later, Julia Butterfly Hill is covering the ground at a rapid pace.
She's published a book, spoken across the country, graced the pages of a fashion magazine. She's been hailed as a savior, heckled as a sellout and hustled for her time as a smart and well-spoken ecological ''It'' girl.
Sometimes she misses the sanctuary of the tree she called Luna.
''I knew I was coming down to a whirlwind. I didn't know I was coming down to a tornado,'' she says.
Julia Hill - Butterfly is a childhood nickname - climbed Luna on Dec. 10, 1997 for what she thought would be at most a three-week sit. A preacher's daughter from Arkansas, Hill, now 26, had come to California on a pilgrimage of sorts after a serious car crash rearranged her priorities.
From the start, the willowy young woman who had dabbled briefly in modeling defied the stereotype of humorless tree-hugger.
In her book, ''The Legacy of Luna,'' Hill describes an incident in which a logger for Pacific Lumber Co., Luna's owners, cut down a neighboring tree accidentally clipping Luna, almost sending her flying. The logger shouted ''words you don't want to hear from your surgeon, your haircutter, or your logger.''
She tried talking, then singing to the loggers. Once, she dropped a plastic bag filled with granola and a snapshot of herself dressed up in pre-tree finery to try to show ''how silly our preconceptions of each other are.''
Life as the world's most famous tree-sitter had its droll moments.
In her book, which painstakingly notes how it was published in an environmentally safe way including the use of recycled paper and soy-based inks, Hill writes of having to turn off her pager, phone and walkie-talkie the day Bonnie Raitt and Joan Baez came to visit.
She gave half her limited stock of blankets to visitor Woody Harrelson after he decided to stay the night but noted he was a bit put out with the hardscrabble conditions and ''groaned profusely'' at the 6 a.m. phone call that served as impromptu alarm clock.
''He's obviously not a morning person,'' Hill wrote. Still, ''I truly appreciated the fact that he was real, even if his reality was very different from mine.''
On Dec. 18, 1999, Hill came down from Luna after Pacific Lumber agreed to spare the tree.
What she misses most: ''Having that one sense of place day in and day out. It was not an idyllic fairy tale setting ... it was very brutal up there, but at least in those storms I had one grounding place in my life.''
What she doesn't miss: Riding out winter storms 18-stories up with little but her wits and a flapping blue tarpaulin for protection; substituting a damp sponge for the steamy gush of a hot shower - ''I'm never, ever going to take that for granted.''
Coming back to earth was no walk in the park.
Within days of her descent, she flew to New York to be photographed for a story in Elle magazine. ''I was so much the proverbial deer in the headlights ... all I could think of was, 'Where is my forest?'''
She coped, climbing trees in Central Park and wearing her own clothes, not designer duds, for the photo shoot - ''I'm an activist, not an actress.''
It wasn't all bright lights and accolades.
Many on California's North Coast who depend on logging for a livelihood remain bitterly opposed to her campaign and the industry is cool to her arguments for change.
''There's a role for emotion to play in this debate, but the debate cannot be concluded based on emotion alone,'' says Chris Nance of the industry's California Forestry Association. ''What she has to say is not enough to get us to a solution as to how these forest resources should be managed.''
Still, her brand of passionate perseverance is hard to resist. Among Hill's correspondents is Pacific Lumber President John Campbell, with whom she began talking while still in the tree. At one branch-to-ground meeting, he sent up a pack of soda, she sent down a crystal.
''She's not your typical angry protester,'' says Pacific Lumber spokeswoman Mary Bullwinkel.
Some of the darts came from within the environmental movement. Hill was heckled at a speech at the University of Oregon by people who accused her of selling out.
''For every action, there's an equal and opposite criticism,'' Hill says.
She plans to stay active.
At 3 o'clock on a warm North Coast afternoon, Hill, unexpectedly tall at 5' 10'' - ''A 200-foot tree will make anyone look short!'' - is elegantly casual in a dark turtleneck and jeans, standing on a balcony overlooking deep green folds of thickly timbered hills.
The trees belong to Pacific Lumber, but the moment belongs to Hill.
Today she has interviews scheduled 9-to-5 with a three-and-a-half-hour meeting to top off.
''Everyone has an opinion, a demand, a request, a feeling, a thought, you name it, about me and what I'm doing with my life,'' she says in the rich alto tones that captured attention even through the static of the walkie-talkies and cellphones she used to communicate with from the tree.
She's been asked about running for Congress, something she'd consider ''should all the energies and the forces come together and I feel guided that that's where I can be most effective.''
For now, Hill will continue working with the group she founded from the tree, Circle of Life Foundation.
''I'm not into an 'Us vs. Them.' Because whether we like it or not we all share the same planet. Period,'' she says. ''If you get rid of all the chaos and all the junk in the world, it boils down to the fact that we live on a tiny, beautiful island in the midst of a great big universal ocean. How do we find a way to coexist?''
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