Lindsey Pritchett - Turtle Island Nature Preserve

Turtle Island is a place that has fascinated me since I learned about it two years ago in Religion and Ecology. It is a nature preserve in North Carolina that was built by Eustace Conway. The nature "Island" was built to "guide people through experiences with the natural world to enhance their appreciation and respect for life." At Turtle Island, visitors and residents live in log shelters or "primitive tents" such as those Native Americans use. The community is self sustaining, living off the land and building homes and shelters that directly reflect the local environment. The informational website (http://www.turtleislandpreserve.com/) boasts that the log shelters were made with the trees that grew on the land. Furthermore, everything the people of this community eat is either grown in a garden or hunted on the land. The people in this community "orient to the basic foundation of where things come from and where they go." The community has been around for approximately 20 years. It is an effort to revive traditional ways of living, such that we have studied in primal religions, that cultivates an appreciation for nature and a relationship that extends beyond the aesthetic. People travel here for short getaways and summer camps where they learn the benefits of developing a relationship with the environment around them. In a setting such as Turtle Island, it becomes difficult to ignore the spiritual implications of having such a relationship to the world around you. Not only do you learn to appreciate nature, but I imagine you would learn to appreciate every living thing around you: from plants that provide food or serve medicinal purposes to the animals that die to feed the human belly.