Help Feather & Fern Get Home #jointhefairytale

My name is Shai Beaulet, a long-time #climatechange activist. I'm asking for your help to give two young California Coastal Redwoods a chance to survive. This November, I'll drive 13-year-old Feather and her 7-year-old little sister Fern (both hand raised from tossed on the ground 3-inch sprouts to plantable trees) 550 miles north from my Los Angeles home, to the city of Carmel-By-The-Sea, in what we want to be a happy ending to a very improbable fairytale.

I was 10 when doctors announced an autoimmune disorder would kill me before I reached 30, and though my health is often a painful day-to-day thing, with hard choices and the loving, generous support of my family and friends, I'm still here at 67.

Feather and Fern should never have survived, either. Their Parent Tree was unfortunately planted on a Los Angeles parkway decades ago, directly under powerlines, and is severely topped. It lives in a constant state of panic, casting sprouts because it believes it's dying. Feather and Fern were ripped off their parent by kids who didn't understand doing that caused the tree even more trauma.

13 years ago, my wife and I gathered several sprouts from the ground, put them in shot glasses with water and a bit of sugar, and placed them on our kitchen window sill with little hope any would survive. But, one did. We named her FEATHER. Six years later, we rescued FERN. I've been told raising one Redwood successfully from a sprout is unlikely; raising two is more like a fairytale.

I've been raising trees to help fight #climatechange since a 5th-grade school presentation explained how trees sequester carbon and produce life-giving oxygen. Raising trees has always been my way of holding onto hope in my very precarious life. But Feather and Fern are not native Southern California trees, and no one I contacted here wanted them. Feather is over 4 feet tall and rapidly outgrowing the whiskey barrel in which she lives. She needs to be planted now. I was panicking. 13 years of daily love and care would be for nothing if we couldn't find Feather and her little sister a permanent home.

After months of dead-end phone calls and emails, it was two amazing heroes at CalFire (California's Renknowned Firefighters and Forest Protectors) and a hail-mary email from another hero from save-the-redwoods who connected me to the Foresters of Carmel-By-The-Sea. They have graciously offered to plant both trees in their city's gateway park, Devendorf.

But, getting two Redwood trees 550 miles up north will be costly. To transport Feather and Fern, we'll need to rent a truck, buy gasoline (as I write this, I've seen local prices as high as $7.89/gallon!) We'll need to hire a few strong people to get Feather and her whiskey barrel into the truck. Fern's in a smaller, more portable pot. I'll need to eat and stay somewhere overnight to catch my breath before driving the 550 miles back home.

My wife and I started this Gofundme to help us with these expenses. We believe a lot of people love California's Iconic Redwoods. They know what these magnificent trees do to slow #climatechange. Feather and Fern want to do their part, but if they stay in Los Angeles, they'll die. On their behalf, we humbly ask you to contribute whatever you can and #jointhefairytale.

Please help Feather and Fern have a chance to live. Any funds raised above what we need to transport them (calculated on current expense estimates) will be divided amongst the organizations that helped Feather and Fern get home. Thank you from all of us.