Her companion? The actress Daryl Hannah.
Fairchild is one of several local landowners-turned-activists joining outside protesters in the fight to stop a Canadian company from building the pipeline across their properties. Some protesters have holed up in "tree sits" 80 feet above ground or bound themselves to construction equipment to block TransCanada from finishing the Texas portion of the 1,660-mile project by next year.
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About 29 people have been arrested since protests began in August, including eight arrested Monday at a roadside protest not far from Fairchild's farm, where they hoisted banners and chanted against pipeline workers as local sheriff's deputies looked on.
Fairchild's arrest has become symbolic of the effort, and of the growing solidarity between unlikely local protesters and activists arriving from outside Texas to fight the pipeline.
The day of her protest, Fairchild emerged from the woods and took up position in front of a massive mechanized shovel, her bobbed gray hair pulled back in a scrunchie, arms raised in front of her.
Fairchild had never agreed to let TransCanada build on her land. The company created an easement on her property under Texas' eminent domain law, paying what she says was less than half of what they initially offered. Fairchild has hired an attorney to fight for her land.
The widow of a petroleum geologist, Fairchild has lived in the area since 1988, and never fought a pipeline (or the law) until now. That day in the woods, she listened as sheriff's deputies she knew tried to avoid handcuffing her.
"If you'll just go home, we won't arrest you," she heard them say.
"What about my friend?" Fairchild said of Hannah.
"She is not your friend," she heard the deputies reply.
And so Fairchild went to Wood County Jail for the first time in her life on a misdemeanor trespass charge, where she was fingerprinted, photographed and held in isolation with Hannah, a.k.a. her "jail-mate," an actress she had never seen before. They passed the time chatting and singing "You Are My Sunshine."
The justice of the peace who released them, a neighbor of Fairchild's, didn't require her to post bond, and offered her a ride home afterward, Fairchild said.
Although President Obama has said TransCanada must reroute northern portions of the pipeline for environmental reasons, he has not disputed the southern stretch running through East Texas, which received final permits from the Army Corps of Engineers this summer.
David Dodson, a TransCanada spokesman, dismissed the recent protests as an "unlawful occupation" by opponents who have created a "climate of fear" but have not, he said, slowed work on the southern, 485-mile part of the pipeline that runs through Texas.
About a week after Fairchild's arrest, she was served with legal papers: TransCanada attorneys had requested an injunction to block her and other "eco-terrorists."
"I don't even know what an eco-terrorist is," Fairchild said as she sat in the kitchen at her farm this week holding a copy of the filing, which is several inches thick and includes photos of her and Hannah protesting. "I've had three traffic tickets in my life. I'm not a criminal and I'm not a terrorist."
In the filing, which Fairchild plans to add to a scrapbook she's making about her new life as a protester, TransCanada also accuses her of harboring members of the Tar Sands Blockade group, allowing them to use her farm as a "base for their operations."
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