Times Union

By DAN HOWLEY, Rensselaer bureau chief First published: Tuesday, August 1, 2000

She's out on a limb over saving trees Hildegard von Waldenburg and Julia "Butterfly'' Hill both love nature, and apparently have a particular affection for trees. They just have a different way of showing it.

Hill lived high in the branches of ancient redwood for two years to prevent California loggers from turning it into patio furniture. She became a national celebrity in the process. A chilly February day 18 months ago, 80-year-old von Waldenburg took a shotgun from the kitchen of her Cold Water Tavern Road home in the outbacks of Nassau, and ran off a five-man road crew that was about to slice and dice one of her beloved trees with a chain saw.

Now she's known far and wide as gun-totin' granny, and a road crew hasn't been seen near her place since.

For her tantrum, she was charged with second-degree menacing, whatever that means, and if her case ever gets to trial, and if a jury ever finds her guilty, she could do a year in the slammer.

She has been enjoying all the attention, and looks forward to her day in court. And if she has to go to jail, she says she'll go -- with one stipulation: her husband's going with her.

"If I have to go to prison, they'll have to take Fritz, too,'' she says. "I have to cook for him. We have never been separated in 60 years.''

Four town judges have excused themselves from hearing her case but now it looks as though they are closing in on a trial date before North Greenbush Town Justice Ray Elliot.

A telephone conversation with the infamous granny revealed that a jury will have to struggle at times to keep a straight face when she gets around to telling them her side.

She says she ran into the house to get the shotgun, only after her pleas to get the men to leave failed.

"It was a reflex. I just wanted to frighten them away,'' she says. "I wasn't going to shoot them. I don't even know how to handle a gun. But these were five big men. I couldn't have used a frying pan or a pitchfork.''

The couple had the old shotgun in the kitchen because a crazy fox had been spotted in the area and they wanted to be ready in case it decided to pay them a call. Fritz, obviously the less emotional of the two, intercepted his beloved Hildegard long enough to empty the gun of ammunition before she bolted back outside.

Gun totin' granny, it seems, did what she did because she tends to get emotional when it comes to her home and her trees and just about anything in nature.

The couple lives in a grand old house on a heavily wooded 200-acre farm teeming with wildlife. They have their own goats and when gun-totin' granny's not distracted by the sounds of approaching chain saws, she finds time to churn out about 200 pounds of goat cheese a year. They also raise chickens but have never slaughtered one because, she says, after 20 years of laying eggs, they've earned their retirement.

The goats and the chickens are her companions, but she sees her trees as something not just for her but for future generations.

"A tree is something holy,'' she said. "This road was here before Nassau even existed. If we don't keep beautiful winding roads like this with trees and wildflowers, we will end up with just straight highways from one mall to the next mall.

"Once a tree is cut, it's gone for good. You can't get it back. If you destroy the country, you have only the city and suburbs. This is what I'm fighting for.''

She says she got hooked up by radio with the woman in the redwood tree, but she told granny she didn't approve of violence and that she believes only in prayers and love.

"Well I said, 'I'm not for violence either, but that you can't leave everything to prayers.'

'' Maybe, but a broom might have worked just as well.