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 Turtle Island is located in a remote hidden valley at the end of a long gravel road. 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. We completely made the many buildings of our farmstead; carved literally from the wilderness.
Accommodations for guests are simple shelters i.e., log houses and primitive tents. We really believe in getting back in touch with the natural world. We use outhouses for our bathrooms and learn to "go outdoors." This is a complete cultural experience not a watered down viewing. When a group comes here it is life changing for them. That is our vision, goal, and success! We get hands on "experiential" activities going whether harnessing a mule or pounding metal at the blacksmith shop or killing a rooster for supper.
Some people mistake a description of primitive living with "roughing it" but actually our ancestors moved gracefully with a balanced rhythm through daily economic challenges. It is the sophisticated "modern man" that, in his bumbling ignorance of earlier natural lifestyles, finds himself truly uncomfortably "roughing it" through his inability and discomfort of trying to exist in his "foreign environment" of nature.
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 Public Speaking Engagements by appointment. Please leave a voicemail at Turtle Island office (828) 265-2267 with a phone number and available time to reach you.
Want to meet Eustace and see Turtle Island Preserve first hand? Schedule your own personal Horse 'N Buggy Ride with Eustace!
Eustace Conway is a unique naturalist. He celebrates the freedom of individuality in all aspects of life. He is a spokesperson for the Earth, giving voice to the natural environment he loves. The renowned wildlife artist, Sallie Middleton, told him on his thirtieth birthday, "You are the most interesting man I have ever met." Perhaps this is because Eustace has lived the life he has imagined...followed his dreams. Like thoreau, Eustace has gone to the woods to live deliberately, fronting only the essential facts of life, to see if he could not learn what it had to teach, and not when he came to die discover that he had not lived. He has lived in the woods for over 20 years. He learns by visiting extremes; once when Eustace severely cut his thumb, he sewed it back together with twelve stitches, and used plant medicine.
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When I first walked on this land, Turtle Island, I knew I had found the sacred ground I had been searching for. It matched the vision I had carried since youth -- a remote pristine valley -- to be kept forever wild. I bought the first 107-acre tract that week. We have added many more tracts since then and built a farm from the forest and a program based on experiential education. "SIMPLY REAL" became our motto and hard work, focused and determined our daily mantra.
We created a place where people can get in touch with the roots of humanity and connected with the resources and abilities that sustain our existence. We simplfy our day to food, shelter, water, and clothing which enables us to see more clearly the picture of how we fit into the bigger circles of life; our food chain, water cycle, Eco system, and environmental economics.
We break rocks to make stone tools, bend bark to fashion baskets, and spin sticks to create fire. We drive horse and buggy, plow gardens, dry wild persimmons, cook stinging nettle, watch the morning light first hit the tree tops and lift a rock in a stream to see what mysteries reside there. We watch a spider weave a web or 42 butterflies stir at our quiet passing.
We enchant the overstimulated apathetic bored spirit within us as we wash the dust off by standing in the rain watching the deer come closer, listening to the wren's call -- not just hearing but listening to the wild things as if they matter and then realizing that they do.
At Turtle Island you can meet people who really live in the forest and take immediate responsibility for their actions. We work with groups of all types from business professionals to elementary classes. We are eclectic, diverse, spontaneous and creative we offer a door to a renewed vision of an ancient natural reality that governs all. With a few sticks and bones we can wake up your world!
In Peace,
Eustace |
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