Survivalist
faces charges for teaching in self-built school
Eustace
Conway has lived in the wilderness of the Appalachian Mountains for
30 years, detached from modern society. Now, he wants to teach others
his survival skills – but the state of North Carolina has slammed
him with a series of violations.
RT,
18
March, 2013
The
51-year-old man has traveled from coast to coast on a horse, faced
down a grizzly bear, defeated a thrashing buck with his bare hands,
grown his own food, hunted game, made clothes out of animal skin, and
survived harsh winters on snow-capped mountains.
Few
are as qualified as Conway to teach basic survival skills. After 30
years in the wild, Conway set up a camp called “Turtle Island” to
show kids how he lived in the wilderness – from cooking on fire to
gathering herbal medicines. But in November 2012, the state of North
Carolina forced Turtle Island to shut down, on grounds that the camp
violated building code regulations.
“These
buildings aren’t fit for public use,” Joseph A. Furman, Watauga
County planning director, told the Wall Street Journal. Conway’s
camp includes primitive facilities that he says are free from modern
trappings. He built them himself, and says that “codes don’t
apply to what we’re doing” at Turtle Island. But the state is
preventing anyone from escaping its iron grip, in terms of what
qualifies as a ‘building’.
“Modern
inspectors know how to measure a board, but not how to build a
building,” he told the WSJ.
The
Watauga County planning department has slammed Conway with a 78-page
report outlining the health and sanitary violations of Turtle Island.
The county claims that Conway’s open-air kitchen and toilets made
of sawdust are not permissible for a public facility. And unless the
common area has a conventional restroom, fire sprinklers and smoke
detectors, his entire camp must remain shut down.
Even
though Conway has proved his self-reliability and even been featured
in a History Channel show called “Mountain Men”, he is being
forced to adhere to conventional modern society – if he wants to
avoid prosecution, that is.
The
shutdown of the camp has angered Conway and nearly 13,000 supporters
who have signed an online petition, asking the North Carolina
Building Codes Council to change its codes to exempt structures like
Turtle Island.
“The
very building techniques and materials that all of our ancestors
thrived with are now being deemed unacceptable and targeted as
illegal because they don’t fit into the cookie-cutter code status
that is so extremely far from what we are about,” the change.org
petition reads. “…The invasive attack [by the county] was a
surreal wake-up call to the illusion of the American myth: ‘Land of
the free.’”
Conway
is now facing the threat of criminal charges for running a camp that
didn’t comply with modern society’s strict building codes. The
51-year-old had saved up money he raised from speaking engagements
and survival courses to purchase the 1,000-acre property that he
called Turtle Island. But despite his ownership, survival skills, and
the purpose of the wilderness camp, the county is threatening to
prosecute him unless he upgrades his buildings to conform to the
modern age.
“If
this was a joke or something out of a science fiction novel about
corrupt government control, maybe I could laugh about it… but it is
very, unbelievably, maliciously true,” the petition quoted Conway
saying. “And I can only cry about it, and ask for the voice of
friends to support me and citizens that care about the ‘American
Dream’ of freedom to speak up for their rights and interests now.”
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