User:Kellylucie/Turtle Island Preserve

Turtle Island Preserve is a 1000-acre nature preserve located in the Appalachian Mountains, near Boone, North Carolina. Naturalist Eustace Conway founded the preserve in 1987. It is a completely sustainable environment, allowing its members to function and survive in the wilderness. They offer summer camps for everyone from children to adults as well as yearlong internships, allowing all people to engage in a truly life-changing experience.

History
In 1987, Eustace Conway founded Turtle Island Preserve, an environmental education center and 1000-acre wildlife preserve near Boone, North Carolina. He inherited the vision of earth stewardship and betterment of man from his maternal grandfathers' legacy of Camp Sequoyah, founded in 1924. Turtle Island is a continuation of this rich educational family heritage. The name Turtle Island is derived from the Native American belief that a great turtle rose up out of the waters after the Earth had flooded and made the decision to support life’s creatures on its back.

Eustace Conway
Eustace Conway founded Turtle Island approximately twenty years ago. At the age of twelve, he camped alone in the mountains for a week. Conway lived off the land, a way of life he still lives by today. At seventeen, he left home to live in a tipi for the next seventeen winters of his life. He attended Appalachian State University, earning degrees in English and Anthropology. Conway has lived with many different Indian tribes, traveling and backpacking thousands of miles in numerous countries along the way. Conway works towards peace on earth and strongly believes in the importance of understanding and respecting one’s environment.



Geography
Turtle Island is located in a remote hidden valley at the end of a long gravel road. There are natural resources abounding in the huge natural preserve. The buildings are literally carved from the trees of the surrounding wilderness. Accommodations for guests are simple shelters like log cabins or tents. Outhouses are used for bathrooms and people learn to "go outdoors." Turtle Island tries to show itself as a nice preserve that is "one with nature" yet there is a nice collection of rusted automobiles sitting on the property.

Boys and Girls Summer Camps
The Boys and Girls Camps offer a totally natural living experience and exceptional education. All campers and instructors live in tipis and rustic shelters. Campers learn to make what they need for wilderness comfort. Children can expect to have educational experiences about the environment. Turtle Island Preserve offers an excellent outdoor classroom where hands on activities breathe life into Native American and colonial history, as well as the natural sciences. The Summer Camps provide youth with a strong experiential foundation and motivation for cultural and scientific studies.

Family Camp
Turtle Island's Family camping trip provides a unique and special opportunity for parents and children to slow down and enjoy uninterrupted company while experiencing nature at its best. Daily activities are offered to acquaint participants with their new surroundings and help them appreciate nature.

School and Community Camping Trips
Turtle Island's school and community camp is based on exciting educational experiences with nature. Biology, botany, geology, and ecology come to life when students eat, tan, weave, and carve materials they gather from nature. Students learn aboriginal skills that are cultures apart from their day to day life. They return to prehistory, and the history of early man and early America.

Eustace Conway's Traditional Lifestyles" Exposure Workshop
The workshop is held on Turtle Island's horse drawn farm, a real working farm abounding with rich Appalachian tradition. Eustace gets participants involved in the things he does as part of his daily lifestyle. Activities may include spoon carving, plant gathering and usage, blacksmithing tools, horse and buggy rides, garden harvesting, cooking with wood, using a log builder's tool kit and much more.

====Adult Camp & Adult Weekend Workshops ==== Adult Camp offers a natural experience for those who wish to learn old time Appalachian mountain skills, develop a deeper connection to the earth and make new friends. It enables a profound understanding of our connection to all of the creatures and elements that share the earth. A small group of ten adults come together to learn while living outdoors in a beautiful forest setting.

Sustainability
Turtle Island is a completely sustainable environment. The surrounding nature provides everything necessary for survival – wood to cook food and keep warm, land to harvest vegetables, etc. Every structure on site is made from trees located on the property. The largest structure is the barn, the roof being made of 5,000 hand-carved shingles; the total cost of the barn was $27. Turtle Island is also home to its own blacksmith shop and sawmill. Eustace Conway is an ideal example that it is possible to “live off the land.”