Turtle Island

"...Americans, through our constant striving for convenience , are eradicating the raucous and edifying beauty of our true environment and replacing the beauty with a safe but completely "faux" environment."

"...we are each given only one dazzling moment of life here on Earth, and we must stand before that reality both humbled and elevated, subject to every law of our universe and grateful for our brief but intrinsic participations within it."

I pulled these two excerpts from The Last American Man, by Elizabeth Gilbert, which I received in the mail from a very special lady (thanks Chrissy!). I started reading this book a couple of days ago, and I found that it resonated deeply with some of my strongest beliefs. The book describes the life and work of Eustace Conway, an extremely heroic and strange man. Eustace lives in the woods in North Carolina on a 100 acres of property, and is completely self sufficient - he hunts and gathers for his food, builds his own shelters, and walks the walk when it comes to sustainability and living in harmony with the natural world.

The words in this book conjured up a lot of emotions in me. I felt inspired to live a similar life, but also guilty for how disconnected I am from the earth and it's other inhabitants. So, late Tuesday night, about twenty-five pages in, I decided to do something about it. I did some research about Turtle Island, and decided to apply for one of their 14 month internships. I was going to live in the woods. Hunt. Farm. Sew my own deerskin moccasins and chop firewood and feel like a million bucks (dollars or deer). :-)

Screw grad school and a future full of fluorescent lights and boxes. I was going to LIVE.

I went to bed smiling, exhilarated by the idea of my newfound life aspirations. Then I woke up Wednesday morning, and there, in my Inbox, was a response from Turtle Island. There was a ton of information about the internship and an invitation to follow up.

Holy shit. This was real.

Once the initial excitement started to wear off, I started to become aware of the other side of the coin... I started to ask myself. Do I want to spend all day chopping firewood? Would I be satisfied with an agrarian lifestyle? I still felt strongly about reconnecting with the earth, but at what cost? I like hot showers A LOT. I like heating in the winter and AC (or at least a fan!) in the summer. I wasn't sure that I was ready to give up all of my creature comforts...

Basically, I realized that while I do want and need to live a life more closely aligned with natural processes and the web of all existence, I'm also cool with making a few... exceptions. And besides, not all modern advances are out-of-sync with the universe, or are necessary harmful to us. The printing press, sliced bread, and modern medicine (for the most part), are just a few of the welcome human advances that bring about a better quality of without doing damage to the environment. We don't need to throw about the baby with the bathwater. We don't even need to throw out the bath water, especially if it's nice and warm!

So I think you should read the book. Hopefully, you'll have a crisis of conscious. Go ahead, plant a vegetable garden, or maybe spend sometime WWOOFing , but I won't be mad at ya if you don't decide to give up hot showers. I know I can't.