Ah, Wilderness! Mountain Man vs. the Building Inspector
County Shuts Rustic Preserve; Self-Sufficiency Doesn't Meet Code
BOONE, N.C.—Eustace Conway says he has stared down a grizzly bear, wrestled a thrashing buck and ridden a horse from coast to coast. But he may have met his match in the Watauga County planning department.
Mr. Conway, 51 years old, is best known as "The Last American Man," the title character of a 2002 biography and National Book Award finalist by Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of "Eat, Pray, Love." He has lived in the wilderness since the early 1980s.
He traps, shoots and grows much of his own food, makes pants out of buckskin and stitches his own wounds. He bathes in the cold creek that rolls through his 1,000-acre Turtle Island preserve in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. And he teaches others how to live off the land.
But now, Mr. Conway is devoting most of his time to the type of meetings, red tape and compromises he went to the woods to avoid.
Last fall, a team of health, construction and fire officials showed up for an unannounced inspection of the preserve, acting on an anonymous tip. Escorted by two sheriffs' deputies, they executed what Mr. Conway describes as a "SWAT-team raid"—peering into outhouses, stomping around log cabins, and climbing hand-hewn ladders.
Their findings are compiled in a 78-page report with a bullet-point list of violations. Mr. Conway's sawdust urinal and outhouses? Unpermitted, according to the officials. The wood he used to erect two dozen buildings? Built with lumber that isn't "grade-marked," meaning it doesn't specify the mill where it was produced.
The open-air kitchen, with its crates of potatoes and stacks of pots? "Not protected from insects and animals," according to the report. "It is, in fact, outdoors."
The health department has shut down Turtle Island (which isn't an actual island) to outsiders who flock to Mr. Conway for lessons on how to rough it. He says on his website he teaches people how to "break rocks to make stone tools, bend bark to fashion baskets, and spin sticks to create fire," as well as "wash the dust off by standing in the rain, watching the deer come closer, listening to the wren's call."
Visitors include scouts, school groups and interns who stay for 14 months. Costs range from $65 for a two-hour, horse-drawn carriage tour with Mr. Conway to $1,400 for a two-week camp for teens. Turtle Island operates as a not-for-profit educational organization. Mr. Conway has run programs there for more than 20 years.
The county says Mr. Conway must rebuild or tear down his cabins, barn, kitchen, blacksmith shop and sawmill, and create a septic system before hosting any more classes and camps.
"These buildings aren't fit for public use," says Joseph A. Furman, county planning director.
Mr. Conway says primitive facilities are precisely the point.
"Modern inspectors know how to measure a board, but not how to build a building," he says as he tours one of the structures deemed fit for condemnation. The lumber's not stamped with a grade because he produced it himself at his own sawmill, from trees felled nearby, he says.
He likens his construction techniques—such as interlocking corner notches and cantilevered roofs—to those of frontiersman Daniel Boone, namesake of the county seat.
"Codes don't apply to what we're doing," he says.
Mr. Conway has attracted supporters, including Don Carrington, vice president of the John Locke Foundation, a libertarian-leaning Raleigh, N.C.-based think tank. "Why can't you do what you want on your own land?" he asks. "Shouldn't you be able to have guests come in, and say here's where you go to the bathroom, here's where you eat, and if you don't want to do that, don't come?"
State building officials say they would like to help Mr. Conway and are considering changes. Local officials say their hands are tied because the codes are written by the state. They also say even amending building codes wouldn't address fire and health issues at Turtle Island.
Mr. Furman, the county official, says it is simple. The cabin built and slept in by campers last summer needs a bathroom, fire sprinklers and smoke detectors. "Does anyone sleep there? Then it has to meet the residential code," he says.
Mr. Conway can't sell his $10 Turtle Island T-shirts, either, unless the common area where they are on display has a restroom. As for the old trucks used on the property, parked by a maintenance shed? "That could be considered an automobile garage, but let's not go there," Mr. Furman says.
Watauga County Commissioner Perry Yates said the problem isn't Mr. Conway's primitive methods but rather his less primitive ones, like using an oven range in the outdoor kitchen. "If we are going to teach 1776, let's teach it the way it really was," Mr. Yates says.
"There needs to be give and take on both sides," he says. "We need to respect our ancestors' way of life, but we also need to do it in a sanitary manner."
Last year, Mr. Conway was featured on the History Channel's "Mountain Men," a reality TV show about what it is like to "shed the complications of modern society." He and two other men, in Montana and Alaska, are depicted facing hungry animals, bad weather and contentious assistants. The second season started filming last month at Turtle Island.
Mr. Conway questions why the local government is acting now. "Maybe we were oblivious, but we had no reason to think about it," Mr. Furman says. "We're liable for it now that we know."
Mr. Conway says his property is safe because visitors spend most of their time outdoors. "People say, 'think outside the box,' and I say, 'just think outside,' " he says. "I mean, really, go outside! Think!"
Retired history teacher David Gould took nearly 2,000 ninth-graders over the years on retreats to Turtle Island from Durham Academy, a prep school. "Most of these kids come from privileged backgrounds and have virtually no knowledge of the out-of-doors," he says. They learn how to trek through the woods in the dark, use a hunting knife and make their own meals. "The girls in particular come back way more self-confident and empowered," he says.
More than 11,000 people have signed a petition from the change.org website asking the N.C. Building Code Council to exempt primitive structures like those at Turtle Island. Mr. Conway is answering supporters by email. "I write something on a piece of paper, then I tell it to someone and then they email it," he says. The computer in the camp office is solar powered, as the camp doesn't have electricity.
"I believe our founding fathers would do anything to come back and get in on this one," he said in the email.
