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The Associated Press Publishes 2,000-Word Feature on Eustace Conway This Weekend on CNN, Yahoo!, Others

Eustace Conway rests on a wooden sledge in front of the horse barn at his Turtle Island Preserve in Triplett on June 27. (AP Photo/Allen Breed)
Eustace Conway rests on a wooden sledge in front of the horse barn at his Turtle Island Preserve in Triplett on June 27. (AP Photo/Allen Breed)

Aug. 13, 2013. Featured on CNN, Yahoo! News, and other global media outlets this weekend, Allen G. Breed with The Associated Press penned a 2,000-word feature on Eustace Conway, detailing the man, his 1,000-acre Turtle Island Preserve, the recent battle with the local governmental authorities and the History Channel’s reality show called “Mountain Man.”

Read the excerpt below and click on the following link for the entire story dated Aug. 10.

The way Eustace Conway sees it, there’s the natural world, as exemplified by his Turtle Island Preserve in the Blue Ridge Mountains. And then there’s the “plastic, imitation” one that most other humans inhabit.

But the border between the two has always been a porous one.

When he bought his first 107 acres in 1987, Conway’s vision for Turtle Island was as “a tiny bowl in the earth, intact and natural, surrounded by pavement and highways.” People peering inside from nearby ridges would see “a pristine and green example of what the whole world once looked like.”

Since leaving his parents’ suburban home at 17 and moving into the woods, Conway has been preaching the gospel of sustainable, “primitive” living. But over the past three decades, those notions have clearly evolved.

Conway has traded his trademark buckskins for jeans and T-shirts. Visitors to Turtle Island are as likely to hear the buzz of a chain saw as the call of an eagle, and interns learn that “Dumpster diving” is as important a skill as hunting or fishing.

And then there are the television cameras.

For the past two seasons, Conway has brought his message of simpler living to the History Channel reality show, “Mountain Men” — a role he concedes is inherently oxymoronic.

“I think television’s terrible,” the 52-year-old woodsman says with a chuckle that shakes his long, iron-grey beard. “So it’s definitely a paradox.”

For more, click here

Look below to watch AP video about Conway that features candidate for the Boone Town Council, Quint David, who works for IONCON (It’s Only Natural) Engineering. 

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VS-X1WjDZI&feature=youtu.be[/youtube]

To read High Country Press‘s coverage of Eustace and his battle at Turtle Island Preserve, click here for numerous articles over the past year.