GREAT VIEW, BUT NO ROOM TREE SITTER TAKES BREAK ONLY TO VOTE.

Byline: Amy Raisin  Staff Writer

STEVENSON RANCH - The massive oak tree on Pico Canyon Road was nearly 200 years old when the Founding Fathers elected the country's first president in 1788.

John Quigley, the environmental activist who has spent the past five days perched high in the grand oak to save it from the blade of development, lowered himself from his leafy dwelling Tuesday just long enough to cast his vote in the general election.

``(Voting) is the minimum required in our society if you want to have a say in how America works,'' said Quigley, 42, a producer and environmental educator. ``Sometimes citizens have to step in and let the politicians know how we feel.''

Quigley feels so strongly about saving the tree that he has not left it to bathe since he scaled its trunk early Friday morning. The Pacific Palisades resident told his girlfriend he hopes to be home by Christmas.

Passing the hours on a 2 1/2-by-6-foot plank, reading the biography of Henry David Thoreau, he often pauses to accept a hot meal or letters of encouragement from local children.

While his perch is stocked with trail mix and energy bars, sympathizers have begun delivering home-cooked meals to the curious man in the tree. A pulley system serves as an elevator for such deliveries. When understanding friends are willing to take it for disposal, he also sends down sealed containers of human waste.

``That's the first question everybody asks,'' Quigley said. ``How do you go to the bathroom? ... The first few days here I was so busy dealing with the mechanics of being on this little platform. I'm pretty comfortable now.''

Quigley said his longest stay in a tree was three weeks, when he was active in saving forests in Canada. The blue-eyed activist with a scruffy beard said he was awed by what he considers the heroism of Julia ``Butterfly'' Hill, the woman who lived in a tree in Northern California for two years.

``She had a little more room to move around, but the concept of being up in a tree for two years is just beyond (comprehension),'' he said. ``And she braved the winter of El Nino.''

Members of the Santa Clarita Organization for Planning the Environment contacted Quigley last week about the tree's impending doom - to be cut down to expand Pico Canyon Road - and, within hours, he had rigged a makeshift platform and gathered the necessities for a stay of unknown duration.

Organizers said other tree sitters might relieve Quigley from time to time, depending on the length of the fight with the county and the developer. A friend scaled the trunk for temporary tree-sitting moments after Quigley headed out to vote.

Living in the tree, Quigley said, has given him a new understanding and respect for nature, including the redheaded woodpecker that wakes him every morning.

``This tree was here before the Pilgrims came. There's a certain consciousness to it, a certain wisdom,'' he said. ``I usually go to sleep after sundown; then I wake up when it's dark, and I just watch the stars. There's a ton of shooting stars out here.''

Judy Ruppert of Stevenson Ranch stopped by the tree Tuesday and said she planned to bring her 11-year-old daughter later to show her the importance of standing up for one's beliefs.

Ruppert's own mother, Carol King, likened the tree to a landmark.

``My sister lives in Virginia, and when she gives people directions to her house, she always tells them to turn at the old oak tree,'' King said. ``These trees have been here far longer than any of us and they should be here long after.''

CAPTION(S):

2 photos

Photo:

(1 -- color) John Quigley, sitting in a giant oak tree by Pico Canyon Road to stop a developer from cutting it down, admires the view from his perch.

(2) Save Our Oaks tree sitter John Quigley talks to visitors below his 2 1/2-by-6-foot perch beside Pico Canyon Road.

David R. Crane/Staff Photographer