About Turtle Island

Turtle Island Preserve is the ‘brain child’ of Eustace Conway. He inherited the vision of earth stewardship and betterment of man from his maternal grandfathers' legacy of Camp Sequoyah, founded in 1924. Turtle Island today is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit education center, a continuation of this rich educational family heritage. Turtle Island exists as an interpretive guide and gentle coaxing partner for people interested in seeking out enriching, satisfying, nurturing, meaningful, and transformative experiences with our ancestors graceful dance through life and history.

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, make 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 completely made the many buildings of our farmstead; carved literally from the wilderness.

Visitors are uplifted by the clean environment, beautiful streams, huge trees, pristine forest, and horse-drawn farm. It is like walking back in time, actually more like leaping back in time! Ferns, flowers, butterflies, and utter beauty are in every direction. You experience hand split shingles, hand carved log buildings, log bridges; nature made sounds and smells. All of your senses are stimulated into a pleasant state seldom found outside the world of nature.

Some people mistake a description of primitive living with "roughing it," instead 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.

Accommodations for guests are simple shelters, log houses and primitive tents. We really believe in getting back in touch with the natural world. We use outhouses instead of bathrooms and learn to "go outdoors." This is a complete cultural experience, not a watered down viewing. Whether harnessing a mule, or pounding metal at the blacksmith shop, or picking vegetables in the garden for supper, we are hands-on with experiential activities. When a group comes here it is life changing for them. That is our vision, goal, and success!

We are dedicated to the values and ethics of sane sustainable life practices for a quality future for generations to come. We learn more than recycling, but rather an earlier gem: sustainability. You are immersed for a day, or a weekend, or a week of this lifestyle. We offer inspiration through activities structured and adjusted to your ability and comfort zone. The real outcome is not limited to the surface impression of the bulleted list of skills taught.

There is a much more profound influence impacted on a grand psyche scope that is more important to us at Turtle Island. For instance, a group may go into the forest with an axe, select a tree - chop it down - cut it to length and split it in half lengthwise. The group will carve rungs and assemble a ladder from their tree. In doing so they will use tools like the broad hatchet, adz, and froe, wedges, drawknife, auger, and they will learn the skills needed to wield these tools. And this is an excellent education, giving historic perspective and botanical understanding of the forest and ethnographic uses of flora. But the real "meat of the value" in these "theme based" man and nature interactions is an elusive spiritual connection and stimulation of a deeper part of our natural human essence.

This goes back to the roots of our human experience and touches something emotionally moving. We are affected more deeply than the surface actions of making a ladder. We climb up and down the rungs of time, exercising the essence of being fully human which goes well beyond our present technology and is often trapped within the enslavement of our modern technology - the bills to pay for it, the illusion of freedom, and the dissatisfying theme that only specialists can do anything – while we lack personal empowerment. So come make a ladder at Turtle Island and realize your true potential.