Woman stays planted in her cause

TYNGSBOROUGH -- Swinging in a hammock 20 feet above ground yesterday, Melisa DeMauro proclaimed: ``I feel one with the tree."

DeMauro, 28, spent her second day in Tyngsborough yesterday living in a 150-year-old white pine tree to prevent her neighbor from cutting it down.

She plans to stay until they relent. She left her post Wednesday night at 6 p.m., when she hosted a summer solstice vegetarian dinner. She resumed her vigil yesterday at 7 a.m. and came down again at 6:30 p.m. to tend to her garden. She said she would climb back up again this morning.

Her neighbors, the Kourkoulakos family, watched in puzzlement. As it turns out, DeMauro herself may own the tree, which stands near her property line. The family plans to call in a surveyor to determine who owns the disputed pine.

``We told her, until we find out if it's ours, we're not cutting it, so I'm not sure why she's still sitting up there," said Natalie Kourkoulakos, 29.

DeMauro runs the White Owl organic farm, and friends who described her as a fervent environmentalist said they were not surprised by her protest. Still, DeMauro said that when contractors began sawing the tree, she almost lost her nerve. But she called their bluff and stayed put. The contractors left.

``I felt life and death," she said. ``I never thought in this lifetime I'd know what it feels like to be a tree that's getting cut down. I feel like me and this tree are the same person."

And so yesterday life in the tree continued.

``It's so calm and peaceful," DeMauro said. ``It's what life should be like all the time."

Her protest recalled Julia ``Butterfly" Hill's two-year stay in a California redwood tree in the late 1990s, which ultimately forced a logging company to preserve a three- acre grove of redwoods.

Lately, treeborne protests have regained popularity. Last week, actress Darryl Hannah was evicted from a Los Angeles walnut tree where she was protesting the planned demolition of a community garden.

In Tyngsborough, the root of the conflict may be a simple misunderstanding between two neighbors.

Michael Kourkoulakos, 28, said a tree specialist said parts of the white pine had shallow roots and could fall.

``I explained to her it is more out of the safety of my family," he said. ``We can make it a win-win situation. I can do what you want, like plant some other trees."

At the end of last summer, the two parties agreed the tree could be cut down if DeMauro had advance notice so she could move her farm animals out of the way, and Kourkoulakos would have to leave the tree where it fell, planting sugar maples in its place.

Kourkoulakos said he made recent plans with a contractor to take down the tree, but was surprised when it was being cut Wednesday morning. He left DeMauro a message, but she said he failed to give her advance notice, so she took to the tree.

``I think they made a decision based on fear, and now they're paying the consequences," DeMauro said.

Yesterday, as she and her friend, Jeff Keys, 29, of Lowell, sat in the tree, curious neighbors filed by and reporters visited throughout the day.

``Melisa is a deeply committed environmentalist. She has intense integrity. She walks her talk," said friend Heidi Feinstein, owner of the Life Alive Urban Oasis and Organic Cafe in Lowell, which buys DeMauro's organic produce.

``I'm not surprised at all," Feinstein said, ``because she's a passionate woman. She doesn't back down."

DeMauro said she was subsisting on pine needles, which she said were ``very tasty."

Sitting one branch lower, Keys sang the praises of tree life: ``It's relaxing. You're not thinking of all the problems you have on the ground."

After she left the tree Wednesday night, DeMauro stopped by Kourkoulakos's place. He told her of the plans to call in a surveyor. Kourkoulakos said that if it turned out that the tree straddles both properties, he would let it be.

And even if it were his, he said, he would try to accommodate DeMauro's wishes.

``I truly am concerned with her safety," he said. ``We'll work it out. And for now the tree will stay."