No. 258 - Turtle Island

For the last week or two, while channel surfing in the morning on XM Radio, I have stumbled upon the audiobook reading of The Last American Man by Elizabeth Gilbert on Book Radio.

The story was about a man, Eustace Conroy, who at the age of 17 moved out of his parents' house so that he could live in a tipi in the woods. The portions of the book that I heard involved Eustace walking the Appalachian Trail, going to college (during which I think he lived in a tipi), and talk about buying a piece of land called "Turtle Island."

Again this morning I heard Turtle Island mentioned.

I learned that Eustace Conroy (born Eustace Robinson Conroy IV) is the owner of the 1000-acre Turtle Island Preserve near Boone, North Carolina. In the "About Turtle Island" section of the website, it had this to say:

Our programs are full of lifestyle practices of earlier people from our great grandparent's time and back into prehistory. We orient to the basic foundation of where things come from and where things go. We plant and harvest in our gardens, milk goats, make butter, soap, bowls, spoons and tools of all size and description. We hunt and gather wild foods and medicines and natural resources abounding in our huge natural preserve. We cook on a fire, gathering our own wood.

In the "Frequently Asked Questions" section of the website, it had this to say:

"Why is it called Turtle Island?"
It is named after the Native American legend that a great turtle rose up out of the waters after the world was flooded and made the decision to support life's creatures on it's back. American Indians call the earth "turtle island" and so we call our tract of land "Turtle Island Preserve" for we are an earth preserve. In the figurative sense, we are an island of wilderness in a sea of development and destruction.

And I particularly like what they say on the homepage: We are more about doing it than talking about it.

I also learned that Turtle Island Preserve is featured in a National Geographic book by Pam Grout called The 100 Best Vacations to Enrich Your Life.