For eleven months, a rag-tag army of grassroots radicals and youthful dregs of the cultural subterrain have waged non-violent war against the Forest Service and timber companies bent on logging in the Warner Creek area of the Willamette National Forest. Declaring themselves the Cascadia Free State, the enviros aim at saving the last old growth forest in America. Many see themselves as creating an anarchist community. PNS writer A. Clay Thompson reports from the scene.

CASCADIA FREE STATE, OREGON -- A 10-foot-high wall of downed trees, boulders, steel and cement stands where Forest Service Road 2408 ends and the Autonomous Zone begins. To the right is the rock face of the mountain -- to the left is a steep descent several hundred feet down. A grubby, dreadlocked young man hangs in a climbing harness from a three-legged tower that straddles the wall. A banner emblazoned with a clenched fist and an anarchist black flag hangs from the tripod.

We're at the outer gates of Cascadia Free State, where environmentalists and eco-anarchists are in the eleventh month of their occupation of the Warner Creek area of the Willamette National Forest. While elsewhere in the country anti-government militants organize themselves into armed underground militia, set up fortified camps or plot acts of violent sabotage, the Forest Defenders are waging an explicitly non-violent war to save the final five percent of old growth forest remaining in America.

The occupation was sparked by Federal Appeals Judge Michael Hogan's ruling last Sept. 6 voiding the environmental protections that safeguarded the woodlands. Judge Hogan ruled that the "Timber Salvage rider" signed into law by President Clinton in July 1995 overrode Warner Creek's status as habitat for the endangered Northern Spotted Owl.

Hogan's decision allowed Thomas Creek Timber Co. to log in Warner Creek's sixteen-acre Cornpatch Roadless Area. It also gave a green light for more cutting in the Warner Creek region. But forest activists -- mobilized by Cascadia Forest Defenders and Earth First! -- had different ideas: they blockaded the access road to Warner Creek and claimed the region as their home. They call these besieged woodlands "Cascadia Free State" and some of them regard America as a hostile foreign nation.

Here at the lower camp, tents and tarps provide shelter for some ten to twenty outdoors people, hippies, and a smattering of punks. Hundreds of people have devoted time and energy to the cause of Cascadia, but it's these grassroots radicals and youthful dregs of the cultural subterrain whose constant presence has made the project possible. Weekend eco-warriors often swell the population to fifty or sixty. Natural food stores in nearby Eugene donate a constant supply of food. A mountain stream provides water.

With his grimy Anarchy Ale T- shirt, patched camo shorts and dreads, Jake, 24, has been at the siege since day one, enduring one of the harshest winters in Oregon's recent history. "When I first came to Oregon I totally fell in love with the trees, all the animals and wildlife, the feeling you get from leaving civilization," says the one-time urban squatter. "I feel it's important that places be left alone for future generations, for the children."

A 26-year-old college dropout from southern California who goes by the initial "C" says he's dedicated the last six months to Warner Creek because "it's the most successful forest blockade in U.S. history, and because it's an anarchist community. It's not about trees -- it's a total revolution against the government ... "

Three-quarters of a mile further up the mountain an Earth flag and watchtower look out over the timbers of the inner fortress wall and drawbridge. Behind the barrier, several half-ton concrete "lockdown" points are set in the road. In an emergency, the forest defenders will insert their arms into the lockdowns and chain their wrists to a metal post inside. "We have a couple of lockdowns that are essentially concrete coffins with air holes. If people have food and water down there, I don't know how the Rangers would get them out," claims C.

Tripods like the structure that towers over the front wall are another deterrent for law enforcement. Comprised of three fallen timbers lashed together and cemented into the road, the two-story tripods are occupied by activists bent on making it very difficult for the Forest Service to arrest them. The tripod sitters will be joined by activists perched on platforms high up in the old-growth Douglas Fir, Hemlock and Cedar.

The Cascadians have also decimated the six-mile access road to the disputed woodlands with logs, stone walls, and vast holes. One trench is six feet deep and fifteen feet across, and features a stream-fed bathtub and shower. Local legend has it that a rare bird -- the Cascadian Roadpecker -- is responsible for the damage.

"We promise not to charge the Forest Service for the modifications the birds made to the road," quips activist Cindy Noblitt. The Forest Service plans to prosecute the Cascadians for felony damage to Federal property.

But after an eleven month siege here, Free Staters are claiming a major triumph following a directive by Agriculture Secretary Daniel Glickman forbidding further "salvage" logging in roadless forest areas such as Warner Creek. The order nullifies a second, larger sale of Warner Creek timber that was to be bid on in August. Cascadia Free Staters say the Fed wouldn't have acted without pressure brought about by the occupation.

Meanwhile, the Siskiyou Forest Defenders in Southern Oregon have turned an attempted old-growth logging operation in the Siskiyou National Forest into a Free State. Enviros are blockading an 8,000 acre logging operation in federally owned Cove/Mallard wilderness Area in Idaho. And activists are discussing the possibility of a Headwaters Free State if negotiations for the long disputed Redwood groves falter.

The Cascadian Free Staters are hesitant to claim total victory. "All we know is that we've kept chain saws off the mountain for almost a year," says Tim Ream, a former EPA employee who mounted a 75-day hunger strike for Warner Creek earlier this year. The Cascadians say they won't relinquish their fledgling homeland until an acceptable, binding settlement is reached. "And if we leave," says Cindy Noblitt, "we'll never take our eyes off them."