Protesters leaving tree-stands on Bent Mountain after being found in contempt of court

“Now let’s go ahead and start the fight.”

Terry and her daughter, Theresa Minor Terry, came down to earth one day after a federal judge found them in contempt of a court order that allowed Mountain Valley to build its pipeline, through their land and over their objections.

Had they stayed in the trees past midnight on Saturday, the Terrys would have faced fines of $1,000 a day and the prospect of being forcefully removed by U.S. Marshals.

Knowing that the fines would go to a company she detests was a factor in Red Terry’s decision.

“Mountain Valley has taken enough from us,” she said. “There wasn’t a lot more I could do up there besides show my ass and give them money.”

As word spread Saturday that the showdown was nearing an end, more than 100 spectators — some toting lawn chairs and six-packs of beer — gathered on a piece of Roanoke County land that has been in the Terry’s family for seven generations.

The first sign of surrender came when Minor Terry began to toss her sleeping bags and other belongings down from a wooden platform suspended about 30 feet high from a tree, where she had been camping since early April.

At 3:45 p.m., she donned a rope harness and began to rappel down from her perch.

“You’re our hero, Minor!” someone in the crowd shouted. “We stand with you, Minor!” another person yelled.

Once on the ground, Terry was met by Roanoke County police officers. They led her to a nearby tent that for the past few weeks has served as the command center for law enforcement and Mountain Valley officials who have kept watch over the tree sits.

There, she was given summons to appear in court on three misdemeanor changes — trespassing, obstruction of justice and interfering with the property rights of Mountain Valley.

Terry fanned her face with the court papers as police explained that she was free to go.

“I am remarkably touched by all the people who showed up to see me safely on the ground,” Terry said after reuniting with friends and family members who had been waiting on the other side of the police tape.

“We are not done with our fight,” she said. “We’re down from the trees, but we are not done with the fight.”

After enduring five weeks of freezing temperatures, high winds, rain and hail storms, and in the end some muggy heat — all while confined to a 4-by-8 foot wooden platform — she said: “I am so looking forward to taking a shower.”

But first, she and the crowd walked about a quarter of a mile to where her mother was still up a tree.

An ambulance joined the procession, and Roanoke County Fire and Rescue crews pulled a ladder from a truck and made their way across two steam crossings and into the woods.

Peeking out from a tarp that covered her tree stand, Red Terry looked down on the scene.

“I’m wondering how many people it takes to carry a ladder,” she yelled. “That must have been a big ladder.”

After several attempts — and after enduring shouted critiques of their tactical skills from a testy crowd — the rescue team secured the ladder and sent an officer up to check on Red to make sure she was physically capable of climbing down.

The plan was for the officer to back down the ladder first, with Red following close behind.

“So if I fall, I kill him first,” Red said to laughter. “I stink, and that might knock him off the ladder.”

At 4:45, they began the trip down, slowly descending step by step. It took five minutes. About half way down, someone asked if Red was looking forward to one of the cigarettes she had been forced to go without.

“I could use one right this second,” she responded.

As she got closer to the ground, the crowd began a chant that has become a rallying cry for pipeline foes over the past five weeks.

“We will win!” they chanted. “We will win!”

They stood five-deep just beyond the police line, at a cluster of tents and campfires where supporters sent up food and water to the Terrys before police cut off the supplies, limiting the women to county-issued meals of bologna sandwiches.

For five weeks, the supporters and hundreds of visitors inhabited what they called Camp WANGA, for We Are Not Going Anywhere.

Once on the ground, Terry was served the same set of charges her daughter faces and then was free to embrace her husband — who the day before was found in contempt of court and fined $2,000 for his support of his wife and daughter.

“You did a great job,” John Coles Terry said as they hugged. “You did a really good job.”

Taking her first few steps, Terry said, “feels kind of wobbly. Like I’ve been on a ship for a month. I’ve been on high seas for a while, it does feel like that.”

She turned to Bottom Creek, a pristine stream that flowed a few feet away. Such streams are likely to be clogged by sediment dislodged from pipeline construction, opponents say.

The fear is that the pollution will be washed downstream, contaminating private wells and public water supplies.

“If they poison that water,” Red Terry said, “they poison Roanoke’s water and they poison Salem’s water.”

Even as she spoke, Mountain Valley construction crews were gathering on the Terry property. As dusk approached, they began to disassemble Minor Terry’s tree stand.

The trees were expected to come down next.

In asking that the Terrys be found in contempt of court, attorneys for the company said they were blocking tree cutting for a pipeline that has been approved by various regulatory agencies.

Supporters of the $3.7 billion project say it will bring jobs to the area and provide a more reliable source of natural gas, a form of energy they say is less harmful to the environment than coal-burning power plants.

In her opinion finding the Terrys in contempt, U.S. District Court Judge Elizabeth Dillon noted that the pipeline has been approved by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and has so far survived legal challenges.

While expressing sympathy for pipeline opponents, Dillon went on to quote from a U.S. Supreme Court case that made it clear the law must prevail over public sentiment.

“If one [person] can be allowed to determine for himself [or herself] what is law, every [person] can,” the court held. “That means first chaos, then tyranny.”

Yet on Bent Mountain Saturday, few seemed ready to surrender.

After resting up for a day or two, the Terrys will make a statewide tour in their crusade against the pipeline, imploring legislators and Gov. Ralph Northam to stop construction before it is too late.

“Let’s find someone who gives a damn about this planet,” Red Terry said.

The word has spread already, with national media outlets carrying stories about the tree sit — one of four along the pipeline’s planned route through Southwest Virginia — and opponents around the state waving signs and wearing T-shirts that say: “Stand With Red.”

“Somebody told me I went viral,” Terry said. “Whatever it means, I have a hashtag. I guess that’s a good thing.”