The Complete Elizabeth Gilbert: Eat, Pray, Love; Committed; The Last American Man; Stern Men & Pilgrims (104 page)

“I’m telling you this because I’m tired. Tired of having people come here with preconceptions that are different from what I’ve just explained to you and then leave in disappointment. I don’t have time for that, so I’m trying to make myself extremely clear. I’ll demand more of you than you’ve ever had demanded of yourself. And if you aren’t ready to work hard and to do exactly what I say, then please stay home.”

Shannon Nunn said, “I understand. I want to be there.”

Shannon showed up a month after this conversation, ready to work. He was more excited, he said, than he’d ever been about anything. He was a young man seeking spiritual wholeness in the woods, and he believed he had found his teacher. He was looking, he said, “to drink of that water that—once you find it—you will never thirst again.”

Seven days later, he packed up his bags and left Turtle Island, deeply angry, hurt, and disappointed.

“I went there,” Shannon told me over a year later, “because I thought I understood the deal. Eustace promised me that if I worked for him, he’d teach me how to live off the land. I thought he would be teaching me survival skills, you know? Like hunting and gathering. Like how to build a shelter in the wilderness and how to make fire—all the stuff he knows. I’d invested a lot of time and energy to go to Turtle Island. It was scary, because I’d left everything—my home, my family, my school—to go there and be taught by him. But all he had me doing was mindless menial labor! He didn’t teach me anything about living off the land. He had me building fences and digging ditches. And I told him, ‘Man, I could be digging ditches back home and getting paid for it. I don’t need this.’”

Shannon was so disappointed that within a week of his arrival, he went to Eustace to discuss his problems with the apprenticeship program. Eustace heard the boy out. His response was: “If you don’t like it here, go.” And he walked away from the conversation. This made Shannon furious to the point of tears. Wait a minute! Why was Eustace walking away from him? Couldn’t he see how upset Shannon was? Couldn’t they talk about it? Work something out?

But Eustace had already talked and didn’t feel like talking anymore. He’d had this same conversation again and again with many different Shannon Nunns over many years, and he had nothing more to say. Eustace walked away from the conversation because he was tired and because he had to get back to work.

He sleeps only a few hours a night.

Sometimes he dreams about Guatemala, where he saw children who were adept with a machete by the age of three. Sometimes he dreams about the orderly farms and quiet families of the Mennonites. Sometimes he dreams of dropping his agenda for saving the human race and, as he wrote in his journal, “changing Turtle Island into a private ‘for me’ sanctuary to try to survive the ridiculous nature of the world today.”

But then he dreams about his grandfather, who once wrote, “More enduring than skyscrapers, bridges, cathedrals, and other material symbols of man’s achievement are the invisible monuments of wisdom, inspiration, and example erected in the hearts and minds of men. As you throw the weight of your influence on the side of the good, the true and the beautiful, your life will achieve an endless splendor.”

And he dreams about his father. He wonders how much more backbreaking success he’ll have to achieve before he earns one word of praise from the old man.

And then he wakes up.

Every morning, he wakes up to the same thing, to a national crisis. An impotent nation reflexively ruining everything in its path. He wonders whether there’s any hope of repairing this. He wonders why he’s thrown his life into the breach to save everybody else’s life. Why he allows his sacred land to be overrun by clumsy fools who treat the place so roughly. He wonders how it came to pass that, when all he ever wanted was to be nature’s lover, he feels he has become her pimp instead. He tries to comprehend the difference between what he’s obligated to do with his life and what he’s allowed to do. If he could do only what he truly wanted, he might sell off this whole heavy burden of Turtle Island and use the money to buy a broad parcel of land somewhere in the middle of New Zealand. There, he could live in peace, all alone. Eustace loves New Zealand. What a spectacular country! Free of every kind of poisonous creature, sparsely populated with honest and trustworthy people, clean and isolated. To hell with America, Eustace thinks. Maybe he should drop out of the mountain man rat race and leave his countrymen to their fate.

It’s a gorgeous fantasy, but Eustace wonders whether he’d have the resolve to act on it. Maybe when he dreams about moving to New Zealand he’s like one of those urban stockbrokers who dream about cashing out and moving up to Vermont to open a hardware store. Maybe, like the stockbrokers, he’ll never make the shift. Maybe, like them, he’s too invested in his lifestyle to ever change.

“Maybe I’m too late with my message,” he says. “Maybe I’m too early. All I can say is that I think this country is suffering through a mortal emergency. I think it’s a nightmare and that we’re doomed if we don’t change. And I don’t even know what to suggest anymore. I’m tired of hearing myself talk.”

CHAPTER NINE

We are great, and rapidly—I was about to say fearfully—growing!

—John Caldwell Calhoun, 1817

I
get drunk with Eustace Conway sometimes. It’s one of my favorite things to do with him. OK, it’s one of my favorite things to do with almost anybody, but I particularly enjoy doing it with Eustace. Because there’s some measure of peace that the alcohol brings to him—those famous sedative properties at work, I suppose—that tamps down the fires within. The booze helps turn down his internal furnaces for a short while, which lets you stand close to him without getting singed by the flames of his ambitions and blistered by the buckling heat of his worries and convictions and personal drive. With a little whiskey in him, Eustace Conway cools out and becomes more fun, more light, more like . . . Judson Conway.

With a little whiskey, you can get Eustace to tell his best stories, and he’ll whoop in delight as he remembers them. He’ll imitate any accent and spin the most outrageous yarns. He will laugh at my dumbest jokes. When Eustace Conway is drinking, he’s likely to crack himself up by peppering his dialogue with distinctly un-Eustacian modern phrases he’s picked up over the years, such as “Yadda-yadda-yadda,” or “You da bomb!” or “That’s a win-win situation,” or—my favorite—upon receiving a compliment, “That’s why they pay me the big Benjamins!”

“So, I’m hiking around Glacier National Park one summer,” he’ll say, soon after the bottle has been opened, and I’ll smile and lean forward, ready to listen. “I’m high up above the timberline, walking across a snowbelt. Nobody knows where I am, and I’m not even on a trail; just a ridge of snow and ice as far as you can see, with steep drop-offs on either side. Of course, I don’t have any decent equipment; I’m up there messing around. So I’m walking along, and suddenly I lose my footing. And it’s so goddamn steep that I start sliding right down the slope, skating down the sheer ice on my back. Most people hiking up there would’ve brought an ice ax, but I don’t have one, so I can’t stop my fall. All I can do is try to dig all my weight down into my backpack, to slow myself, but it’s not working. I’m digging my heels into the ice, but that’s not working, either! Then the snow and ice turn to gravel and loose rock, and I’m speeding
thumpa-thumpa-thumpa
across the boulders at top speed. I keep falling and falling, and I think,
I’m gonna die for real
this time!
and then—THUD. I slam to a halt. What the hell? I lift my head and realize I have just slammed into a dead mule. I swear to God! This is a dead motherfucking mule! This is a freeze-dried, mummified carcass of a mule, and it’s what stopped my fall. Slowly, I stand up and look out over the mule, and right there, on the other side of his body, is a sheer cliff, dropping down about two thousand feet into the middle of Glacier National Park. I start laughing and laughing, almost hugging the mule. Man, that dead mule is my hero. If I’d dropped off there, nobody would’ve even found my body! Not for a thousand years, until some hikers came across it and then wrote a damn
National Geographic
article about me!”

A few more sips of whiskey, and Eustace will talk about Dorothy Hamilton, the black woman who came running out of the fast-food restaurant in rural Georgia when the Long Riders rode by, flapping her apron and kissing the Conway boys and demanding to talk into their tape recorder journal. She knew the Long Riders were riding all the way to California—she’d seen them on TV—and she had a loud message for the West Coast: “
Helllloooo all you surfers out theah in California!”
Eustace keens away in his cabin, summoning up this woman’s joyful voice. “
This is a big hello from yo’ friend, Dorothy Hamilton, the girl in
the CHICKEN shop!!!”

One night, Eustace and I walked down the holler in the snow to visit his dear old Appalachian neighbors Will and Betty Jo Hicks. Will and Eustace set to talking about some old “double-
burl
” shotgun Will used to own. I tried to eavesdrop, but realized, as I do on every visit to the Hickses that I can’t understand one word in ten that Will Hicks drawls. He says “hit” for “it” and “far” for “fire” and “veehickle” for “car,” but I can’t decipher much more than that. Between his missing teeth and his backcountry euphemisms and his molasses inflection, his speech remains a mystery to me.

Back in Eustace’s cabin that night, over a bottle of whiskey, I complained, “I can’t make any sense of that damn Appalachian accent. How can you communicate with Will? I guess I just need to study me that Appa-
language
a little closer.”

Eustace howled and said, “Woman! You just need to Appa-
listen
harder!”

“I don’t know, Eustace. I think it’s gonna take me an Appa-
long
time before I can understand the likes of Will Hicks.”

“Heck, no! That old country boy was just tryin’ to teach you an Appa-
lesson
!”

“I reckon we can discuss this Appa-
later
,” I said, giggling.

“You’re not Appa-
laughin’
at old Will Hicks, are you?” Eustace said.

By this time we were both Appa-
laughin’
our fool heads off. Eustace was busting up, and his big grin was gleaming in the firelight, and I loved him like this. I wished to heaven I had ten more bottles of whiskey and as many hours to sit in this warm cabin and enjoy watching Eustace Conway let go of his fierce agenda and Appa-
loosen
the hell up for once.

I said, “You can be so much fun to hang out with, Eustace. You should show people this part of yourself more often.”

“I know, I know. That’s what Patience used to tell me. She said the apprentices wouldn’t be afraid of me all the time if I’d let them see my spontaneous and fun side. I’ve even considered trying to figure out how to do that. Maybe every morning before we start work, I should institute a practice of having five free minutes of spontaneous fun.”

“
Five
minutes of spontaneous fun, Eustace? Exactly five minutes? Not four? Not six?”

“Argghhh . . .” He gripped his head and rocked back and forth. “I know, I know, I know . . . it’s crazy. See what it’s like for me? See what it’s like inside my brain?”

“Hey, Eustace Conway,” I said, “life isn’t very easy, is it?”

He smiled gallantly and took another long swig of hooch. “I’ve never found it to be.”

There is still ambition in Eustace. He’s not finished yet. Back when he was really young, back when he first walked around Turtle Island with his girlfriend Valarie, he pointed out, as though reading from a blueprint, what he would make of his domain. Houses here, bridges there, a kitchen, a meadow, a pasture. And he has made it so. All over his land now, standing physical and real, is the evidence of what Eustace had originally seen in his mind. The houses, the bridges, the kitchen— everything is in place.

I remember standing with Eustace over a nearly cleared pasture on my first visit to Turtle Island. It was nothing but a field of mud and stumps, but Eustace said, “Next time you come here, there’ll be a huge barn in the center of that pasture. Can’t you see it? Can’t you picture all the grass growing up green and healthy and the horses standing so pretty, all around?” The next time I went to Turtle Island, there was, as though by some enchantment, a big beautiful barn in the center of the pasture, and the grass was growing up green and healthy, and the horses were standing so pretty, all around. Eustace walked me up a hill to give me a better view of the place, and he looked around and said, “Someday there’ll be an orchard right here.”

And I know the man well enough to be certain there will be.

So, no, he’s not done with Turtle Island yet. He wants to build a library, and he’s looking to buy a sawmill so that he can produce his own lumber. And then there’s his dream house, the place where he’ll live. Because after all this time—after more than twenty years in the woods, after working himself numb to acquire a thousand acres of land, after building more than a dozen structures on his property—Eustace still doesn’t have a home of his own. For seventeen years he lived in a teepee. For two years he lived in the attic of a toolshed. And recently he’s taken to living in a small rustic cabin he calls the Guest House—a fairly public place, where all the apprentices and guests gather twice a day for meals in the wintertime when the outdoor kitchen is closed. For a man who claims to want, more than anything, isolation, he has never given himself a truly private space on Turtle Island. Everybody else, from the hogs to the apprentices to the tools to the books, must be housed first.

But there is a home he has been designing in his mind for decades. And therefore you can be sure that it will exist someday. He made the first drawings of it when he was in Alaska, stranded on an island for two days, waiting for the rough seas to subside enough so that he could kayak safely back to the mainland. And when I asked him one afternoon if he could describe it for me in detail, he said, “Why, yes.”

“The fundamental philosophy of my dream house,” he began, “is similar to my feeling about my horses—you go beyond the necessary because you have a love for the aesthetic. This house is a bit showy, but I’m not going to sacrifice quality for anything. If I want slate shingles, I’m going to have slate shingles. Also beveled glass, copper trim, hand-forged ironwork—anything I want. The house will be built with large wooden timbers, and I’ve already picked out some from the woods around here. Big logs and lots of stone, with everything overbuilt for strength and longevity.

“When I open the front door, the first thing I’ll see is a stone waterfall that goes up over thirty feet, with a stone pool at the bottom of it. The waterfall is powered by solar electricity, but also heated, so it contributes to the heating of the house. There will be a stone or tile floor, something that feels good to the eye and feet. The main room looks straight up to a cathedral ceiling over forty feet tall. At the back of the room will be a big sunken fire pit, made of stone, with stone benches built into it. I’ll make fires in there, and my friends can come over on cold winter nights and warm their bodies and backs and butts on those warm stones. To the left of the great room is a door leading to my workshop, twenty feet by twenty. The exterior wall is really just two massive doors on five-foot-long iron hinges that swing out wide and open into the outdoors, so when I’m working in my shop during the summer, I’ll have the air and sun and birds singing.

“Next to the great room are two glass rooms. One is a greenhouse, so I’ll can have a plethora of fresh greens and vegetables all year. The other is a dining room, simple and perfect. There’s a place for everything, just like on a ship. A big wooden table and benches and a wraparound couch. And windows everywhere so that I can look down into the valley, where I’ll see the barn, the pastures, and the garden. Behind the entrance to the dining room is a door leading to the kitchen. Marble countertops, handmade cabinets with antler handles, open shelving, wood-burning stove—but also a gas range. Sinks with running cold and hot water, all powered by solar, and all kinds of handmade this and hand-forged that and cast-iron cooking ware. And there’s another door leading to an outside kitchen, where I can cook and eat in the summertime, with a sheltered deck and a table and outdoor sinks with running water and shelves and stoves, so that I don’t have to keep going inside all the time for supplies. The deck looks out over a beautiful drop-off in the ravine, and there’ll probably be propane lighting out there.

“Upstairs are two small loft bedrooms and—this can be seen from the great room—a balcony opening out from the master bedroom. The master bedroom is the size of the workshop below, but it won’t be all cluttered. Just open space, clean and beautiful. Down the hall from the master bedroom is a composting toilet and a sauna and the loft bedrooms. There’s also an outdoor sleeping porch with a bed on it, but if I have to sleep indoors, there’s a king-size bed with a skylight over it so that I can look at the stars all night. And, of course, there will be huge walk-in closets.

“There will be art everywhere in my home. Over the balconies will be hanging Navajo rugs. It’ll be a little like that Santa Fe style everyone likes so much these days, but full of real and valuable art—not the art-i-fakes people collect because they don’t know better. This home will have lots of art, lots of light, lots of space, peaceful, safe, underground on three sides, useful and beautiful. I’m telling you,
Architectural Digest
would love to get its hands on this place. And I know I could build it myself, but I won’t even break ground for it until I have a wife, because I will be
damned
if I’m gonna build this house without the right woman beside me.”

He stopped talking. Sat back and smiled.

I myself was unable to speak.

It wasn’t that I was wondering where the hell Eustace had ever picked up a copy of
Architectural Digest
. It wasn’t that I was shocked that Eustace, who has preached for decades about how little we need in the way of material surroundings to live happily, had just described his desire to build a rustic mansion suitable to the aesthetic standards of a retired millionaire oilman. It wasn’t that I was contemplating how much Eustace suddenly sounded to me like Thomas Jefferson—a civic-minded but solitary idealist, momentarily letting go of his obligations to the Republic in order to lose himself in the decadent reverie of designing the perfect home away from society. It wasn’t even that I was wondering where those thirteen kids Eustace keeps planning to sire are going to sleep in a house that has only two spare bedrooms. I could handle all that. Didn’t faze me one bit.

My shock was much more basic.

It was merely that, despite all the surprising twists of character I’d come to expect over the years from this most complex and modern of mountain men, I still could not
believe
I had just heard Eustace Conway utter the phrase “huge walk-in closets.”

Here is Eustace Conway, looking down the
burl
of the shotgun that is age forty. If the actuary charts of the insurance industry are to be believed, he is halfway finished with his life. He has achieved much. He has seen more of this world than most of us will ever read about. He has, about seventy-five times a year, done things that people told him were impossible to do. He has acquired and protected the land he always wanted. He has paid attention to the laws of the universe, and that attention has rewarded him with proficiency in a dazzling range of subjects. He has instituted an organization of teaching and preaching founded in his exact image. He has become a public figure of considerable renown. He is venerated and he is feared. He’s at the top of his game. He even calls himself a Type-A Mountain Man, and, indeed, he has become a Man of Destiny in action, the World’s Most Public Recluse, the CEO of the Woods.