By Jorge Casuso

March 20, 2012 -- "How does a tree get on the Internet?" a tree hugger asked as the crowd waited for their leader to return.

"It logs on."

The crowd laughed. It was the fourth annual tree hugging day in Santa Monica, and a dozen tree huggers had gathered around Santa Monica's most famous tree -- the Moreton Bay Fig Tree outside the Fairmont Miramar Hotel.

When the leader, Jerry Rubin, returned, he admitted he felt awkward the first time he hugged a tree.

"If you stop to smell the flowers, do people say, 'Oh, that crazy flower smeller," Rubin said. "If you get the urge, give the tree a special hug. Who knows, maybe it will hug you back in its own way."

Alexandra Paul, who was an actress on the popular Baywatch television series in the mid-nineties, also shared encouraging words with the crowd.

"I had been a treehugger, but I never actually hugged a tree," Paul said. When she told a friend it's not just an ideological stance but a physical act, he looked at her like she was crazy, Paul said.

"I said, You should try it," she told him, "it's a beautiful thing."

Before hugging the 80-foot tall fig tree, former mayor Judy Abdo was asked to name her favorite tree in Santa Monica.

Surprisingly, the fig tree planted in 1879 by Santa Monica founder John P. Jones was not her favorite tree. In fact, it wasn't even her favorite fig tree.

"I planted a fig tree two months ago," Abdo said of her favorite tree. "It's two feet tall. It has leaves now."

In 1976, Abdo had left another fig tree in a pot in her yard. A few years later, it had grown through the pot.

"Now it's huge," Abdo said. "It's three stories high."

City Council candidate Frank Gruber, the Lookout's former columnist, wanted to share another natural occurrence, an unusual alignment of the planets.

If you look toward the horizon at sunset, you'll see a very special sight, Gruber told the crowd.

"Venus and Jupiter are coming together," he said. Next Sunday, they will be accompanied by a crescent moon.

Rubin was almost prepared to commence the tree hugging. But first he introduced Sadie, at 8 the youngest tree hugger in the crowd.

"Are you a tree hugger?" Rubin asked her.

Sadie looked up at the bearded man in the shorts. "What?" she said.

"Are you a tree hugger?" he repeated.

"I think so," Sadie said.

Marissa Rubin, Jerry's wife, read the crowd some tree poems from a children's book and, finally, it was time to hug the tree. The crowd began to scale the massive roots to reach the trunk.

"This is the money shot," said a photographer on assignment for a local paper.

Jerry approached the tree. So did Paul and Abdo and Gruber and Marissa and Sadie. Even Alan Epstein, the head of the hotel approached the tree.