I'm really lucky to have had a great dad who loved me as a child and loved to hike in nature. When I could, I would walk with him. He was always pointing out beauty to me--a little puddle of water with sparkly pebbles shining from the inside, or maybe a leaf with beautiful patterns. My mom was always busy re-creating her nest to adapt to her growing family. She was probably the only woman in our town to own and use a power drill and saw. When I was eight years old she added an upper level of three bedrooms and a bath to our home.
   I moved to Mendocino in 1972. Several years later I began caretaking my aunt's abandoned property in Little River. The land I lived on is adjacent to what's now called the Enchanted Meadow, just above the Albion River's north side. It was there that I dug in deep with myself--in a little shell of a cabin surrounded by forest and pygmy prairie with huckleberries. I lived with no running water, no electricity. There weren't many 20th century distractions around to diffuse the teachings of nature. The wind through the trees taught me many things. This was a very peaceful existence. My first child, Alia, was born on the land, birthed in a tipi in May of 1980. In November of 1992, my second daughter, T'ocha, died on the land in utero at 9 1/2 months while Louisiana Pacific was suing me for trespass.
   In 1987, when LP wanted access so they could plow a road into Enchanted Meadow forests, they met with neighbors. That was when I gave notice; I used the area often. It was sacred to me. They never cited me for trespassing, but sued me for it over five years later. In 1989 I heard that this area was going to be logged, and that one of the harvest plans had already been approved and another was about to be approved in two days. I learned that, although we could write letters to the California Department of Forestry (CDF), they wouldn't stop the cut. I wasn't eager to deal with any bureaucracy or "good old boys," but I knew I had the passion and the will to use my power to keep that place from being logged. That realization was affirmed throughout my being the moment I heard this cherished spot was endangered. 
     I called up CDF and Louisiana Pacific and told them that it was a beautiful sanctuary and that it should remain that way. They told me there was nothing anyone could do. I said, "There's really nothing I can do?" The guy on the phone at CDF said, "Well, you could sue us." I said, "Okay, if that's what I have to do, I'll sue you." That was the end of that conversation. I started networking and a lawsuit was filed two weeks later.

The place wasn't always called Enchanted Meadow. In our Little River neighborhood it was just called "The Meadow." On the south side of Albion River they called it "Loren McDonald's Cow Patch." A forest activist and friend, Richard Gienger, advised me not to use the generic reference numbers that the timber companies place on forest lands they intend to log, like Timber Harvest Plan (THP) 1-89-100.  He suggested we identify the THPs by their local names, or name them ourselves. He said that in the Sinkyone, a stand of redwood trees was named Sally Bell Grove after a Pomo woman. I came up with the name Enchanted Meadow, a broad term for beauty and magic. After a long hike through the forest, you find yourself suddenly drenched in sunlight in lush velvet green environment--blue herons, the changing tides--truly a magical place. Other places in this area have been named as well: Raven's Call, Bear Claw Ridge and Bobcat Bend.
     My relationship to this place--to the water, the air, the sun, the earth, the animals--is what gave me the strength and credibility to take on this enormous task. When I hike down to the bottom of Enchanted Meadow, I make a call. I've done it for twenty years. The animals--who can smell me--probably think, "Zia, you don't have to make that corny call. We hear you, we smell you, we know it's you."

When the lawsuit was filed, I didn't dwell on what the repercussions might be. My decision came straight from the heart. The trees, a most vulnerable species, can't run off to find safety--they remain rooted in the earth. They need allies here. Once I decided to do it everything started falling into place.
     We filed on three THPs: two at Enchanted Meadow and one at Kaisen Gulch. Even though the THPs were rubber stamped and therefore "legal," they were still immoral. In this nestled pristine spot, between two communities, LP had neither the vision nor the understanding to recognize that the value of the land in its natural state was worth more than money.
     My friend and neighbor, Virginia Sharkey, worked with me the first year. We shared a mutual love for the meadow. I called the Mendocino Environmental Center (MEC) which was budding as the nerve center for environmental action in the county. This was 1989. Betty and Gary Ball were there eager to assist. Betty and I often talked on the phone. She gave me phone numbers and helped orchestrate things. The biggest chores were getting an attorney, paying the attorney and informing the community. We've had many attorneys since, and four lawsuits and three appeals. When in court for the first time, I felt tremendous joy. I remember thinking, "This feels great! We've worked, paid our attorney and now she's defending the trees!" Our lawsuits have always succeeded at some point in court. We'd take the money we were reimbursed and put it back into legal fees for the next lawsuit.
    From 1989 to 1992, I worked hard to keep the issue alive. We won on the Kaisen Gulch plan in the appeals court but lost on the Enchanted Meadow plans. Then, when LP was going to log, there was a lot of interest that had already been generated. We filed a second lawsuit in the spring of 1992 because the old logging plans didn't comply with new forestry regulations. The judge ruled against us. We eventually got CDF to issue a stop order. Then LP sued CDF, me personally, and the Friends of Enchanted Meadow. Judge Luther overruled the CDF stop order, allowing LP to cut. This galvanized many people in the community to support us, hundreds of people came, and it really was a big event. The magnitude of the support for the forestland was overwhelming. The protests and logging lasted for six weeks until an injunction was ordered by the appeals court against all logging pending a decision. This historical six weeks of protests, rallies, courage and song is known as the Albion Uprising. When it became a media event the energy changed. In came people not connected to the land but who wanted in on the action. At this point, it felt like the land was a big red steak and the different factions were dogs tugging and snarling -- fighting each other for a piece of it. I was only able to take a breath when the case went to appeals court and sat dormant.

The first fundraiser I did was to send a Native American woman, Margeen McGee to Washington, D.C., to run for Congress. Corn is the native grain of America, so we sold popcorn at the Fourth of July parade in Mendocino. The following year we popped 1000 bags of popcorn to pay for legal fees for Enchanted Meadow.  After that, the Albion Headlands group did the popcorn at the parade; it's become a tradition. Since the beginning, it's been fundraiser after fundraiser. We did everything we could think of.  For months my daughter Alia went around the village of Mendocino and talked up the tourists. She wrote this little story about Enchanted Meadow and sold buttons she made. My two friends, "the Duke and Duchess of Oil," hoofed the pavements getting donations, and the poet, ruth weiss, collected donations. The Albion community was fantastic in their support, and the tourists were generous. We contacted experts, mapped, photographed, and documented habitat conditions, measured trees, found out where all the old growth was, etc. We became far more familiar with the land than the "owners." 

Louisiana Pacific tried to squelch the uprising by suing all the protesters (about 100) they could identify in one broad swoop using a S.L.A.P.P. suit ("strategic lawsuit against public participation"). All were charged with the same thing--trespass and conspiracy to interfere with economic relations. Offenses were named as tree-sitting, playing cat and mouse, trespassing, yarning or spiderwebbing (you can't cut string with a chainsaw), and yelling at loggers. LP's relief was to keep us off the THPs--about 290 acres--and charge punitive damages. What on paper read as a silly action had far-reaching implications. Those who owned homes could actually lose them. LP's attorney  went overboard in her vigilance to prosecute us. Most defendants settled out with LP earlier rather than later, with injunctions expanded to thousands of acres and stipulations that inhibit not only their actions but those of their associates in the future.
   The legal documents I received were about the size of a cord of wood. It became a living nightmare, a demon devoted to my persecution. My legal representation was inconsistent. I became a victim; my grief and torment were horrible. My baby was big in my belly, my father had just died, the trees were falling, and people were out there risking their lives. I was plagued with guilt and concern.
     While the S.L.A.P.P. suit was ongoing, the state changed the forest practice rules to require cumulative effects assessment. LP tried to satisfy this rule using a minor amendment, meaning no public comment. We sued on that issue, which resulted in an important ruling on the rights of the public in the timber harvest plan review process. They were required to file it as a major amendment. But when they did, they left out a lot of information that the public should have had. The Redwood Coast Watersheds Alliance sued them for that (and other matters) last year. This latest lawsuit hasn't gone to trial yet.

LP sued me for trespassing and conspiracy in a S.L.A.P.P. suit in April 1992. In February of 1997, I entered into a settlement agreement with LP. If I agreed not to sue them for malicious prosecution or maintaining a frivolous lawsuit against me, they, in turn, would deed over the Raven's Call Forestlands to Friends of Enchanted Meadow. They also agreed to sell me a riparian corridor of about ten acres. 
     It's been two years now. LP is gone. The new owners--the Fisher family of The Gap--call their LP purchase "The Mendocino Redwood Company (MRC). So far, the delay in my land transfer settlement is due to zoning complications. MRC inherited the responsibility of my settlement but wants to log up to the Raven's Call Sanctuary, leaving no protective buffer to this home of spotted owl, blue heron, raven, osprey and threatening a stream perfect for coho salmon rehabilitation. 
     Through all these years of activism--trying to save this forest--I've supported myself and my daughter, kept my shop going, kept my life going. It's been very difficult. The work I've been doing has been very unpopular in many ways. There is not a lot of real solidarity here on the coast with forest issues because we're dealing with an economy based on logging, even though it's dwindling, and we're dealing with private property rights. But we're living in a time when people have to realize that we simply can't do anything we want on "our" land, because it's not really "our" land; it belongs to the Earth.

Zia Cattalini, a native Californian, is the founder of the Friends of Enchanted Meadow and board member of the Redwood Coast Watershed Alliance. She has been a forest activist since 1989 and has been instrumental in demonstrating that anyone who cares and is committed can make a difference in environmental policy.  Zia is a textile artist and fashion designer with a shop in Mendocino called Zia's, where she sells her one-of-a-kind designs.