In one of the summers before responsibility caught up with me, my best friend Megan and her boyfriend Rick and I would jump into his car and just drive eastward.
One night in August 2002, as we curved around the 401’s on-ramp, we saw a skinny, barefooted, young guy wearing a teal sweater and holding his thumb up in the air.
“We should pick him up,” I said, mostly joking. Rick pulled the car over and we told the dude that we were only going to Napanee, but that he could ride with us that far.
“Whatever, it’s just so amazing that you guys pulled over for me,” he said. “I’m Tre.”
He talked the way I imagined a Californian hippy would. He shoved his guitar and his backpack into the trunk—the attached dirty flip-flops swinging—then climbed into the back seat beside me.
On the hour-long drive, Tre did most of the talking. He was pretty vague about specifics, but he told us about living in California, and said he had just been traveling around North America for five or six years. He reminded me of Jack Kerouac’s character from On the Road, Sal Paradise. When we asked him how old he was, he grinned.
“Way older than you guys—but I’ve got a young soul,” he said with a laugh.
Tre asked whether there were any trees near where we would drop him off. He said he liked to sleep in the open air, under the trees. He explained that he never wore shoes and that he only ate raw food.
When we pulled over at the Flying J truck stop, he gave Megan and I a hug and blessed us with positive vibes. He said he was getting a “no-hug vibe” from Rick, so they shook hands.
Months later, sitting in the town’s public library waiting for my ride, I picked up a Rolling Stone magazine. Flipping through back to front, I saw a picture of a face that caught my eye. Turning the page, I saw the words “Hunting America’s Most Wanted Eco-Terrorist: The Flight of Tre Arrow.”
* * *
Tre Arrow, whose birth name is Michael Scarpitti, was raised by a suburban family in a suburban town in Florida. The first sign that Tre might not be like the rest of his family came when he announced he was becoming vegan. After college, he traveled around the States with a band called Soya Bean Fields. A gig in Portland convinced him that he should stay, and it was while he was living in Portland that he started calling himself Tre Arrow, became a raw foodist and stopped wearing shoes.
In Oregon, he participated in his act of environmental activism in 2000, at a tree-sit to protect a stand of trees called Eagle Creek from being forested. After the on-site protest was raided, demonstrators moved into Portland, where, in front of a crowd of nearly 1,000, Arrow climbed the wall of the Oregon Forest Service offices and onto a nine-inch ledge, where he remained for 11 days, gaining publicity for the cause and eventually saving the site.
In the fall of 2001, he had a run-in with Oregon police over a protest at a forestry site. Arrow climbed a tree and refused to get down. The forestry service sent a logger with a chainsaw to climb the tree, cutting branches as he went. Arrow again refused to move, and after two days without food, water or sleep, he finally fell 100 feet down—into the pile of branches that had been cut from the tree.
The next summer, Arrow and his friends headed back to Eagle Creek for another summer of protecting the trees. That summer, three concrete and gravel trucks and two logging trucks were firebombed in the town of Estacada, Ore. Four people were indicted for the crime, including Arrow. The other three people were arrested and interrogated, eventually fingering Arrow as the ringleader of the crimes.
No one knew where Arrow was, and they weren’t even sure that he knew about the charges against him. When the FBI showed up at the house he was staying at on Aug. 13, suspecting that he had also been involved with an arson at a forest service research station in Pennsylvania on Aug. 11 he had fled over night.
And two days later, my friends and I picked him up and gave him a ride to Napanee.
In March 2004, Arrow was caught shoplifting some bolt cutters from a Canadian Tire in Victoria, B.C. He later said he had stolen the bolt cutters in order to dumpster-dive.
He’s been incarcerated ever since, and is currently at the Vancouver Island Regional Corrections Centre, a multi-level men’s facility in Victoria.
In April 2005, in an interview with CFRU, the University of Guelph’s community radio station, Arrow described life in prison.
“My connection to Earth Mother and living in nature and spending time with the trees and all of our animal friends are really essential to my well-being, and I think, really, for any human,” he said. “I would like to think that my heart hasn’t grown cold, I still try to do what I can. I still engage in yoga and some chi gung to keep connected with the spirit world that way and [to stay] physically active.”
Since his arrest, Arrow has maintained his innocence. He has been appealing his extradition order to the U.S., and is still waiting to hear the outcome of that. According to the Tre Arrow Defense Committee, Arrow’s appeal will be heard on April 18, where his lawyers are hoping that the high profile case of Maher Arar will help in Arrow’s case. Arar’s case has made the Canadian government more discerning about their extraditions, requiring the U.S. government to provide more evidence of a connection to a serious crime.
“If I’m found guilty on this, I literally will be locked up for the rest of my life, for arson. I have been emphatically declaring my innocence,” Arrow said during the CFRU interview. “I don’t burn anything, even if I’m in the woods, spending time with nature; I don’t even make a little fire with dead branches because I don’t want the extra carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide that’s produced. And everyone that knows me, knows me well, knows that I live as consciously as I can, with as little footprint as possible on Earth Mother. I don’t burn anything.”
Arrow has gathered a large group of dedicated supporters and volunteers to help his cause by speaking to the media, maintaining his website and raising funds for legal fees. His sister Shawna is his official spokesperson.
A fundraising concert at a café in Victoria last week was filled to standing-room only and raised a few hundred dollars for the cause.
* * *
Five years ago, I met a friendly guy, who was a little bit weird and a little bit intimidating and who had way bigger ideas than anyone I knew in my hometown.
At one point during the ride to Napanee, in the backseat of that old, blue Pontiac Sunbird, I was fiddling with the tiny light on my keychain. Tre Arrow leaned over.
“Nervous habit?” he asked. I didn’t know what he meant.
“You’re playing with your keys like that. Are you nervous?”
I’m not sure.
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