The Last American Man Chapter 5

• Blog – What does actually starting Turtle Island do to Eustace? What does it allow him to do?

To Eustace, obtaining the loan from his father in order to purchase part of Turtle Island was a life changing experience. Eustace’s father, of course, loaned him the money on “at a competitive rate…” (Pg. 106) So, on October 15, 1987, Eustace Conway bought his share of Turtle Island. He immediately started to build a tool shed with, surprisingly, his dad. Eustace loved the dense forest, and even before purchasing the property he began mapping out the whole 107 acres and figuring out were to place various structures that he would later build. So actually starting Turtle Island and creating it into a camp where children could come to learn about the wilderness excited Eustace, as did anything and everything about nature. He wanted “Turtle Island to be the setting of colossal utopian experiment in which he would try to do nothing less than change and save America.” (Pg. 95) He loved the experience of taking the children into the forest and explaining how the forest floor was ‘alive’. He would bury himself in the moist ground and then describe what he felt, this made all the kids wanted to buried. That is why Eustace wanted to purchase Turtle Island.