BOOKED Solid

There has been much discussion lately in Rehoboth Beach about the impact of the continuing real estate development. Many residents (and visitors, too) are concerned about preserving the primary reason so many people have been attracted to the area. If you think I’m referring to the shopping outlets, you definitely need to read the book I’m about to discuss. It’s actually the beaches, parks, pollution, and air quality that are the primary concern. There are a few groups interested in monitoring the long term effects of development and looking for a happy medium between economic prosperity and environmental protection. In her recent biography of Eustace Conway, The Last American Man, Elizabeth Gilbert presents a man with a slightly different perspective.

Eustace Conway is a man with a mission, "a man of destiny" as his mother puts it. He is personally attempting to reform the modern American psyche through his lifelong dedication to return American ambition and focus to the relationship humans have with nature. On his website for his environmental education program, Turtle Island, he writes, "Americans have separated themselves from the natural world. During the past eighty years we have been advancing so fast that we are as infants trying to run. We would be wise to slow down and learn more about primitive (first) values. Today more than ever we need to understand and live by harmony and balance with nature, for truly, man separate from nature is a fantasy." Gilbert examines his complex relationship with this philosophy in her informative and captivating non-fiction. He is a truly amazing man.

Conway’s commitment is obvious both through his perseverance and his accomplishments. From birth, his education and experience have focused on learning how to survive in the wilderness. He can hunt with early American tools (think bow and arrow, not guns), not to mention clean, cook, and eat his kill, then sew moccasins or pants from the hide—and he perfected these skills by the tender age of twelve. The initial spark for his interest seems to be his mother, a strong and talented woman raised by her father in his boys’ camp. She passed along the skills she learned, but Conway built them into a lifestyle. His relationship with his father was always fragile and tense and has remained so even after the younger Conway proved his "hobbies" could be something more. When he was only seventeen years old (1977) Conway left home and began following his dream of self-sufficient living, living in a hand-made teepee for seventeen years. During that time, he finished college and began his environmental education program.

Gilbert explores his journey while comparing Conway’s beliefs with problems facing modern American men and society at large. Americans are a special breed, she contends, and require new frontiers. As development and our consumer-driven culture spirals out of control, these frontiers are increasingly theoretical. Today’s pioneers are CEOs, out of touch with "the natural cycles that have defined humanity’s existence and culture for millennia. Having lost that vital connection with nature, the nation is in danger of losing its humanity." We exist only as robots, according to Conway, incapable of dealing with the cycle of change and its inevitable losses, unable to hear or sense the quiet language of nature as it was meant to guide us. Instead, Americans live in a climate-controlled box. Eustace Conway means to educate us and help us break free.

Conway’s journeys, described by Gilbert through her own encounters with the man and his journals, friends, and family, are nothing short of spectacular. She frequently mentions that a very common reaction to Conway’s travels is admiration and more than a little jealousy.

Conway’s response is always the same, "You can do it, too." This comes from a man who hiked the Appalachian Trail from Maine to Georgia on a whim, living entirely off the land. He’s set the record for the fastest trip across the United States on horseback—a grueling 103 day trip. He’s canoed on the Mississippi River, kayaked across southern Alaska, and backpacked all over the world. His achievements in environmental education and awareness are awe-inspiring. His drive is unmatched and in other arenas could have made him a very rich man. As Gilbert describes, Conway is obsessed with his ambition, and has compromised his relationships with those close to him at times with his fanatical zeal. Eustace Conway’s story is a fascinating study of one man’s dream and ambition. What sets it apart from so many other American success stories is not only his intensity, but his commitment to preserving something for the future.

Again I return to Rehoboth. I think about why I keep coming back. Yes, I love the community, the friends I have made, the beautiful art that separates Rehoboth from other beach towns. It’s more than that, though. I love the beach in December, that feeling of being very, very small when I look at the horizon. I think about how this is why I have become a teacher, and I want to model for my students this sense of being only a small piece of something greater. But sometimes visiting Rehoboth makes me question those values. I can feel myself being caught up in the quest for material wealth, real estate, building, and buying. I’m certainly not entering the right profession to be swept away by this. When I read about Conway and his life, I feel like my own ideas are put back into perspective.

Note: Conway’s largest project is Turtle Island, the 1000 acre wildlife preserve and education center in Boone, North Carolina. There he runs many different types of programs for both children and adults. The website address is: http://www.turtleislandpreserve.com.