In a story labeled the "Tre Arrow Prison Exclusive" on the cover of Portland Monthly’s December 2005 issue, writer Stacey Wilson visited the man who once spent 10 days on a third-floor ledge of downtown’s US Forest Service Building to bring attention a timber sale. He would eventually lose his extradition fight, returning to Oregon in 2008 to face trial on arson charges. He was out of prison in time to run for Portland mayor in 2012, placing eighth out of 23 candidates in the primary.  

He says he didn’t plan to do it. But when Tre Arrow saw the US Forest Service Building in downtown Portland for the first time, he knew something big was going to happen.

Just before dawn on July 7, 2000, federal and state agents raided a resistance camp of the Cascadia Forest Alliance (CFA) in the Mt. Hood National Forest. Activists and volunteers from the Portland-based group had protested there on and off for more than five years, trying to prevent logging on 1,026 acres in the Eagle Creek watershed. Arrests over the years had been steady; on this morning, police collared six more activists and permanently shut down the camp.

Arrow, an out-of-work folk musician and a CFA volunteer, was asleep at a friend’s house in Southeast Portland when he got a 5am call informing him of the raid at Eagle Creek. He hopped on a borrowed bike and rode to the CFA office at SE Clinton and 13th to organize volunteers, field media calls and plane a same-day protest for 6pm at the US Forest Service regional headquarters on SW First Ave.

But when he arrived at the protest site, Arrow realized a Friday evening rally wasn’t going to get much attention. Government employees were already gone for the weekend, and most people downtown were on their way home or stuck in traffic.

Then the Forest Service building caught Arrow’s attention: The third-story ledge was wide enough to stand on, and the wall was notched, almost like a ladder.

“I wanted to do something to catch people’s attention," says Arrow, reminiscing about the stunt that made him famous as he sits in a Canadian prison, where he is fighting extradition to the United States on charges of arson and conspiracy—activities that the FBI labels eco-terrorism. If he is extradited and found guilty, Arrow could remain locked up for the rest of his life.

“I thought, Someone should climb this building! I feel really comfortable in high places, so I knew I could do it,” he recalls. “Ten seconds later, I was halfway up the wall. I can’t explain it. I just spontaneously did it. Suddenly it was the world-famous ledge-sit.”

Wearing no climbing gear and dressed only in shorts and a T-shirt, Arrow scaled the side of the building and shimmied his tanned, muscular body onto the nine-inch-wide ledge 30 feet above the ground. He stood up—triumphant, euphoric—and announced that he would not come down until the Eagle Creek timber sale was canceled.

The small crowd that had gathered cheered. By nightfall, his friends had thrown him a rope with which he had hoisted up a bucket filled with a harness, warmer clothes, a clipboard and a bowl of fruits and vegetables. Arrow used another plastic bucket as a porta-potty. After he had slept the first two nights with half his body hanging out into the five-inch sill, a friend sent up a nylon mountain-climber’s cot that Arrow clamped to the building. He remembers sleeping like a baby after that.

By Monday morning, July 10, Arrow was a headline made in heaven. He was 26, handsome—in a dirty, earthy kind of way—and funny. He blew kisses at Forest Service employees and flashed the peace sign at the dozen or so friends who gathered below as his ground-support crew. He saw parents showing their kids the guy on the ledge, whom some were calling “the living Lorax” after the Dr. Seuss character who claimed to “speak for the trees.” Out on the sidewalk, a harpist performed and a church group sang; up on the ledge, Arrow preached through a bullhorn and conducted interviews by cell phone.

Technically, Arrow was trespassing on privately owned property, but the crowds were peaceful, respectful and well-behaved, so police held back. On Wednesday, July 12, the building’s owner, Melvin Mark Companies, posted flyers on the building calling Arrow a trespasser. That same day, a temporary restraining order was issued against him. He would have preferred not to, but on July 17, 10 days after climbing onto his perch, Arrow complied with the court order and descended from the ledge.

“I was really set on staying up there,” recalls Arrow. “My mind and body were in optimal shape, and I was willing to go the distance. But it was only a matter of time until they would forcibly remove me, and I didn’t want to create anything violent or hostile. So I came down of my own volition. It was a testimony to my character and what I can engage in as an activist.

On the ground, he was welcomed with applause, hugs and interview requests. Then he was arrested (he would later plead guilty to contempt of court and pay a $500 fine). He was wobbly and smelly, with black feet and sunburned skin. “This isn’t over by a long shot!” he proclaimed. “Everyone get to the woods! I love you.”

The stunt was followed by a federal review of the timber sale, which ultimately stopped the logging after only 267 acres had been harvested, It was the most talked-about and widely reported act of protest in the history of activism in the city then-president George H. W. Bush once called “Little Beirut.” The long-fought Eagle Creek protest later would be considered one of the most powerful, effective periods in the region’s environmental movement, recalled by activists today with the same exhilaration that Arrow remembers experiencing when he climbed the Forest Service building.

The stunt also made Arrow a media darling and a folk hero, propelling him in September 2000 to be nominated as the Green Party’s candidate for Congress representing the 650,000 residents of Portland’s District 3. Though he lost to incumbent Earl Blumenauer, Arrow received 15,763 votes.

In early October 2001, Oregon Department of Forestry employees and police began removing antilogging tree-sitters from the Tillamook State Forest. They used sirens, floodlights and loud music to prevent protesters from sleeping. One of the protesters was Tre Arrow, who was isolated in a 100-foot hemlock.

On October 6, after 48 hours without food, water or sleep, Arrow fainted around 2am and plummeted to the ground. He dislocated his left shoulder, shattered his pelvis, broke his ribs and punctured his lung. When he recovered from his injuries, his status as an icon of the environmental protest movement was solidified.

Less than a year later, he would be notorious.

On August 13, 2002, three Portland State University students—Jake Sherman, Jeremy Rosenbloom and Angie Cesario—were named in an indictment as conspirators in a June 1, 2001, arson at Ray Schoppert Logging Company in Estacada. The indictment also named a fourth co-conspirator: Michael J. Scarpitti.

On October 13, 2002, Sherman and Scarpitti were indicted for setting fire to several cement mixers owned by Ross Island Sand & Gravel on Easter Sunday 2001. The radical and violent Earth Liberation Front claimed responsibility for the Ross Island attack, the first ever by the ELF in Portland.

By this time, Scarpitti, a.k.a. Tre Arrow, had disappeared.

Shawna Scarpitti stayed up late making “Free Tre Arrow!” signs, and now they’re lying in a pile on the lobby floor of the nondescript Supreme Court building in downtown Vancouver, BC. She feels silly holding them if no one’s watching. Only a few people have arriver for her younger brother’s June 27 extradition hearing. She works as an art therapist, but her main focus these days is advocating for her brother.

Around 9am, an armed bailiff escorts Tre Arrow into the courtroom. Arrow, who was in Pennsylvania at the time of the August 2002 indictment, flew the United States immediately after they were issues and spend 19 months hiding in Canada. He was arrested and jailed in March 2004 after being caught shoplifting in Victoria, BC.

He looks pale but healthy considering he almost died last year following a hunger strike and the effects of a self-restricted diet, which combined to reduce his weight from 150 pounds to somewhere under 90. Arrow adheres to a diet primarily of uncooked fruits and vegetables and refuses to eat the cooked, meat-heavy prison meals. Canadian authorities eventually agreed to allow friends to supply him with his meals.

Arrow’s curly brown hair is long and tucked into a low bun. His face is hairless, red and raw because—to avoid using a plastic razor—he opted to pluck out his beard by hand. His body seems smaller and softer than it did on the ledge. He’s wearing a baggy white button-up shirt, khaki pants and, because bare feet are not allowed, laceless blue tennis shoes. Arrow’s been a prisoner for 16 months, so these donated duds are the best he can do. He’s happy to see familiar faces. “Thank you for coming; it makes a difference,” he says quietly, bowing with his hands in prayer to the 15 or so supporters who smile and blow kisses. His sister has tears in her eyes.

The 31-year-old then takes his seat behind a glass enclosure and attends in silence with his back to the audience. He will not be speaking today.

Arrow’s Canadian lawyer, Tim Russell, and the Crown’s attorney, Rosallina Dattilo, appearing on behalf of the US attorney in Portland, begin their opening statements. They will argue for and against Arrow’s extradition to Oregon, where authorities want to try Arrow on 14 state and federal counts of use of an incendiary device, conspiracy and attempting to interfere with interstate commerce. The charges relate to the $260,000 in damages to the Schoppert logging trucks and the Ross Island cement trucks in 2001. If convicted, Arrow faces up to life in prison.

Dattilo says she will prove to Judge Kristi Gill that US attorneys have enough evidence—including testimony by the three convicted PSU students who say Arrow was the ringleader—to send Arrow back to Portland and prove that he coerced the three young activists into buying, assembling and detonating explosives.

Russell says that his client is a political prisoner who’s being framed by three “co-conspirators” who each received relatively light jail sentences of 41 months for naming Arrow in the crime, and that he is being targeted because of his environmental activism and anti-establishment beliefs. He says his client is seeking refugee status in Canada because he cannot get a fair trail in Portland, where Arrow feels his guilt has already been decided.

As they weed through the complexities of extradition criteria—and Arrow’s small retinue of supporters tries to keep up—it’s hard not to wonder how a smart, middle-class kid from a tight-knit family, once anointed an “environmental rock star” by Rolling Stone magazine, got himself into such a mess.

The past few years have been as beleaguered and aimless for the environmental movement as they have been for Tre Arrow, whose saga in many ways parallels what has happened to local activism in the years since the infamous ledge-sit.

“Tre’s struggle really mirrors our struggle,” says 59-year-old Portland forest activist Jim Lockhart, citing an overall decrease in large-scale protest activities. “There just isn’t the momentum there once was. Now, maybe 20 or so people will show up to an event that five or six years ago would have attracted more than 50. I really do miss the big protest days,” says Lockhart, referring directly to the years-long fight against the Eagle Creek timber sale, which many consider the most meaningful environmental victory of the past decade—due in large part to Arrow’s stunt.

“Tre was wildly successful at getting activism in the public eye,” says Alex P. Brown, executive director of the Portland forest-preservation group Bark. “For better or worse, he got grassroots concerns into the public. He knew that if we wanted to really educate the public, we had to take another avenue, something grand and unheard-of. The ledge-sit created news, but unfortunately it also created impressions of how an activist may look and sound.”

A tragic accident in 2002 heightened public disapproval of eco-warriors’ antics. Four days after Senator Ron Wyden announced the official cancellation of the Eagle Creek sale, a 22-year-old activist with the Cascadia Forest Alliance named Beth O’Brien fell 150 feet to her death while climbing to a platform in an old-growth tree in Mt. Hood National Forest. Volunteers said she had chosen not to use the safety device available to her. O’Brien’s death case a pall over what would be Portland-area activists’ last widespread protest effort until 2004’s unsuccessful campaign against the reelection of President George W. Bush.

Brown says changes by the Bush administration to environmental policies over the past five years have demoralized activists. Many point to adjustments to long-standing policies such as the 1976 National Forest Management Act (which Bush amended in 2004 by eliminating the requirement that environmental impact studies be carried out on forest plans), saying such developments have made their fight so broad in scope that the task has become overwhelming.

In the process, the fight has slowly shifted from saving trees to saving the movement.

“We put all our eggs in one basket with Eagle Creek,” says Lockhart. “And even though we won, people were burned out. There’s not a lot of return on your time in this work. It’s like with anything, I think. You climax, and then you have to slow down.”

Many in the movement say they are trying to move beyond the antics of the old protest days and learn to better work the system that Arrow and others fought so intensely.

“We’ve been playing a lot more defense in the past five years because we have to,” says Jill Workman, chair of Sierra Club Oregon. “We’ve had to be much smarter and more strategic in how we send out messages.”

Complicating matters, the gulf separating environmental groups from elected leaders and the general public seems to have widened, if last year’s rejection of Measure 34—which would have required state forests to be managed for old growth and timber—and the passage of Measure 37—a land-use law that favors individual property owners—are any indication.

Matt Blevins, legislative affairs director for the Oregon Environmental Council, says there is less clout left in the environmental community. “Environmentalism has, unfortunately, gone from being something that everybody wanted to a very partisan issue,” says Blevins. “We are resting on our laurels in this state, touting things that we did 20 or 30 years ago. What have we done that’s actually new? There’s a lack of an overall state vision of where we should go next.”

The Sierra Club and other environmental organizations are working to form less traditional alliances in hopes of broadening their legislative influence. On recent example is the Sierra Club’s Clean Cars initiative, which—through partnerships with cancer prevention groups and automotive businesses—called upon state governments to promote reduction of car emissions. “We are learning more about explaining issues and how the impact individuals,” says Workman. “Otherwise it’s just more doom and gloom.”

Workman says large groups like the Sierra Club, which has 800,000 members nationally and 13,000 in Portland, have purposely distanced themselves from activists like Arrow because they don’t want their reputations tainted. “We don’t support civil disobedience, and we never have,” says Workman, referring to Arrow’s ledge-sit. “There is a big difference between peaceful protest and lawful protest. You can have one without the other.”

Greenpeace cofounder Patrick Moore, who left the organization in 1986, has become one of environmentalism’s harshest critics, saying the movement as a whole is severely misguided. “So many of these young people, like Tre Arrow, are lambs for the slaughter because they are unwavering in their beliefs,” he says. “They think humans are the one species in the ecosystem that is optional. They think they are the chosen ones and everyone else is evil.”

Moore points to a palpable post-9/11 disdain for civil disobedience as another strike against the mission of the tree-hugger.

The US campaign against domestic terrorism had already gained momentum in the wake of the Oklahoma City bombings in 1993. “But after 9/11, it was mandated that counterterrorism would officially be our biggest priority, and that includes eco-terrorism,” says Dan Nielsen, assistant special agent in charge of the Portland FBI field office. With the United States gearing up for war in Iraq and already steeped in a war on terrorism Arrow’s flight to Canada after the August 2002 indictment was at best bad timing.

During this same period, the FBI was focusing on the Earth Liberation Front, which advocates violent “direct action”—such as setting fire to new developments, SUVs and logging trucks. The FBI says ELF and the Animal Liberation Front, its animal-rights counterpart, have committed 1,100 acts of destructions totaling $110 million in damage since 1976. The most successful prosecution of a suspected ELF member in Oregon was the case of Jeff “Free” Luers, now 26, who in 2001 was sentenced to almost 23 years in prison for setting fire to three SUVs in Eugene. Authorities believe Luers and Arrow are ELF members; both deny any affiliation.

Arrow supporters claim that the FBI is intent on prosecution Arrow because the agency is desperate to make an example of him. Nielsen denies that assertion. “We are going to enforce the laws and use whatever resources we have,” he says. “But too often the public thinks we have a crystal ball. We are not all-knowing. Are there occasions we get it wrong? Yes.”

Mynah Meagher, an Arrow supporter in Victoria, says the general intolerance for anything resembling terrorist activities post-9/11 has made it difficult to rally support for her friend. “It’s been nearly impossible to get mainstream environmental groups to stand up for Tre,” she says. “They want nothing to do with his case because they ‘don’t condone his actions.’ But what are his actions? Nothing has been proven yet.”

Joe Keating, a 20-year grassroots organizer in Portland, says the protest community feels cowed by the justice system’s intensified efforts to prosecute activists like Arrow.

“It has caused great reluctance on our part to organize like we once did,” he says. “But what’s important is that we continue to make those emotional connections. Take ownership again of single issues. Go into the forest, educate people, protest when we can in a peaceful, lawful way. But only after we’ve asked ourselves, ‘Will this do us any good?’”

It’s 7:10pm on the day of the extradition hearing, and Arrow has just been dropped off at the North Fraser Pre-Trial Centre in Port Coquitlam. (In September, he would be moved to another facility in Victoria to be closer to his attorney.)

The unforgiving glare of prison fluorescent lights illuminates his tired, red eyes and sallow skin. He’s changed from his court clothes into the required red prison shirt and pants, and he has made himself comfortable in the cubicle behind the glass.

He remarks that he’s hungry, as usual. All he’s eaten today are two oranges and a handful of raisins. But he doesn’t care. He is relaxed and excited to talk, saying he hasn’t spoken to a Portland journalist at length and in person since his 2000 dun for Congress.

First off, he says getting caught over a shoplifting arrest really embarrassed him. He admits and regrets snatching a pair of bolt cutters, saying his only intention was to break the lock on a Dumpster. “I was going to retrieve food waste that was going to a landfill anyway.”

Arrow then claims his innocence in the Portland fire attacks. “Arson is not consistent with the way I live my life,” says Arrow. “I don’t burn anything. I don’t even burn twigs in the woods! The last thing I would do is burn tires that emit toxins into the atmosphere.” Arrow says he has spent his entire adult life fighting to protect the earth. He wonders how anyone could think he was capable of such an act.

So why would an innocent man escape to Canada and live under an assumed name?

“Yeah, I get that a lot,” he says, laughing. “All I can say is that I wasn’t willing to play their hand at all. There’s no way I was going to turn myself in and talk to these people who already have it out for me.”

During Arrow’s 19 months in hiding, he never contacted his family. It was brutal for Shawna Scarpitti, her sister, Gina, and their parents, Jim and Melody, a plumber and real estate agent in Stuart, Fla. The family suspects the FBI tapped their phones and says agents showed up at their house unannounced on Christmas Eve 2003. After a while, the family assumed Michael was dead. “So my first reaction when I heard about the arrest was, ‘What?!’” says Shawna Scarpitti. “Tre doesn’t come from values that endorse theft. Needless to say, we were absolutely relieved that he was alive.”

Arrow regrets that his family has suffered because of his actions, but is unapologetic. “It has definitely caused my parents a lot of grief,” he says. “But that’s what comes with attachment. I’m not going to live my life for my parents or anyone else. As much as I love them, I’m going to live my life for me.”

His father told Rolling Stone in 2002 that his son’s dedication to activism had become “almost cultlike” and that he and his wife were realizing it wasn’t just a phase. The Scarpittis have been reluctant to talk to reporters since that article, which labeled Arrow “America’s Most Wanted Eco-Terrorist.” Three years later, they will only say that the charges against their son are “really out of character.”

By the time Michael Scarpitti arrived in Portland in 1999 after leaving Florida State University and wandering around Colorado and Ohio, what was in character for him had taken shape. He had stopped wearing shoes, insisted on sleeping outdoors, rarely bathed and ate only raw food. He called himself Trey Arrow, which he chose as his “forest name” after discovering what he says are his Native American roots. He did not, as has been reported, change his name because “the trees told him to.” “The arrow is very precise, calculated and deliberate in its intention,” he says. “That’s how I live my life, the activism, very serious, very well calculated and thought out. When I find a target, I do whatever I can to hit the mark.”

After dropping the “y” in Trey to make it easier to spell, he legally changed his name to Tre Arrow during this 2000 run for Congress. He would assume yet another name two years later, but for entirely different reasons.

On March 13, 2004, Arrow was arrested for shoplifting. He gave his name to Victoria police as Joshua Murray. Soon they discovered that they had nabbed Michael Scarpitti, a.k.a. Tre Arrow, one of the FBI’s Most Wanted criminals.

When Arrow was arrested, his small troupe of supporters mobilized and launched a Web site to help raise bail. Shawna Scarpitti says $10,000 has been raised at bake sales and fundraisers like last summer’s Tre Arrow PunkFest! in Ontario, but they are nowhere close to meeting the required $300,000.

His tiny band of followers today stands in stark contrast to the crowds Arrow inspired during the 2000 ledge-sit. But Martha Gonzalez and Iris Potter, who know Arrow form the Eagle Creek protest days, are fighting to make sure Portlanders don’t forget their friend. They constitute the two-person Portland branch of the Tre Arrow Defense Fund. “He was a huge story when he was here,” says Gonzalaez, 46. “Now people are wondering, What’s going on with him? We’re just keeping it out there in the media.

Potter, 51, says they target indie online sites where Arrow’s story is still a hot topic, as well as mainstream media. This engagement is no small feat considering that neither woman owns a computer or a cell phone, which is typical of Arrow’s adherents.

Arrow’s friend Mynah Meagher says the media is as much an enemy to their cause as the “injustice system” Arrow fears. “The obvious problem is that Tre has not stood trial yet,” says Meagher, 26. “Although he’s claimed his innocence since his arrest, the media continues to brand him an eco-terrorist. More and more are buying the guilty-until-proven-innocent scheme.”

On July 7, Vancouver, BC, judge Kristi Gill ruled that the Crown’s attorney had presented sufficient evidence against Arrow to extradite him to Oregon to stand trial. Arrow and his Canadian attorney Time Russell are currently appealing the ruling. The process is expected to take months, perhaps even years.

US Attorney Stephen Peifer, the lead prosecutor in the case in Portland, says Arrow can submit to deportation at any time. “People ask me all the time, ‘What’s taking so long?’ I tell them that Tre and only Tre is responsible for it taking so long.”

For Arrow, the decision to stay in Canada, where the prison time counts for nothing, is less about stalling than it is about figs and carrots. “I won’t be able to get the food I have here down in Portland,” he says. “So it’s a quality-of-life issue now.”

And if he is ever free again, he says, he’ll stay in Canada. America no longer feels like home.

In mid-September, a group of Portland activists arrives at Holocene, a hipster club on SE Morrison St., around 6pm to prepare for a fundraiser. The goal of the evening, aside from leafleting over beers, is to raise $3,000 for Bar, the feisty, self-proclaimed protector of the forests around Mount Hood. Bark employees and board members wear felt name tags in the shapes of trees and watch a slide show of photos taken on their once-a-month hikes on Mount Hood, at which armchair environmentalists and professional activists come together to talk about trees. The turnout of 120 is less than Bark had hoped for, and down from 200 last year.

Though the crowd could easily pass for any other subset of the Portland nightlife scene (nearly all wear thrift-store chic and are under 35), there is an air of quiet resolve in the room. For these post-9/11 environmentalists and their Portland peers, activism is turning away from grandiose displays to lower-key strategies and smarter messaging. They say an hour a week of leafleting or cold-calling can make as much difference as living in a tree—or standing on a ledge. A hike in the woods can turn the average recycler into an activist for life. As long as there is passion and commitment, they see hope.

When asked, a couple supports (and the bartender) say they remember Arrow and hope hi is well. Others refuse to comment, wary of the baggage his name carries. Mostly, though, the activists want to talk about the progress they’ve made, the protests they’re planning, and organic. Carless lifestyles they promote. They add that people like Arrow don’t represent what they’re doing now.

Besides, they say, what has he done lately to help the cause?

Sitting in prison, far removed from his beloved forests, Arrow has a ready answer. If he didn’t get his message across on the ledge, or while living in the trees, or today in prison, he will say it again.

“All I’ve ever wanted is for people to see that with every deliberation, we must consider the next seven generations,” he says, outlining his basic philosophy. “If people can just change a little bit, one thing a day, it can have a monumental impact. Planets are hard to come by.”

Was the ledge stunt five years ago the end of an era, as environmentalists say today?

“It’s hard for me to say,” he says. “I wouldn’t like to think that. But things are getting worse these days for activists, not better.”

And if Portland doesn’t miss him, well, he doesn’t miss Portland either. He doesn’t like cities, and he often fantasizes about where he’d go if he were free. He’s thinking a remote Pacific Island so he can “swim, be barefoot, pick fruit and play my guitar.”

Arrow just hopes the people of Portland, who someday very soon may hold his future in their hands, can understand his mission, regardless of their preconceived notions.

Then the bit of freedom that comes with visiting hours ends, so Arrow gets up from his chair and says goodbye, He promises to call the next week just in case he forgot to say something important. He’ll definitely have time. Right now, that’s about all he has. That, and the small sliver of sky he can sometimes see through the window of his cell door.

Arrow then heads back to his cell, where he will contemplate his place in the universe while the battle for the planet is waged without him.