Oregon Public Broadcasting

Radical environmentalist, Tre Arrow, begins his first day at a Portland halfway house Tuesday, after spending the last year in a federal prison in California.

A number of the two dozen supporters who met Arrow at the Portland airport, rode with him on bicycles to the halfway house he’ll be living in for the next six months. Arrow embraced supporters before making the trip himself, on the back of a tandem bike.

Tre Arrow: “I mean what do you think – it’s fabulous. I mean, it’s great to be surrounded with all the love by all the people that have been so supportive, through this whole ordeal.”

Arrow rose to prominence in 2000, when for more than a week, he performed a round-the-clock protest on a narrow ledge of Portland’s federal forest service building.

After being accused of setting fire to logging trucks, he fled Oregon for Canada, to avoid prosecution. Arrow denied his involvement in the arsons until last year, when he pled guilty in return for a lighter prison sentence.