I Visit Turtle Island

Way back in the early 1980s when I was living out of a backpack, I met a fellow backpacker coming thru town on foot wearing his gear and he introduced himself as Eustace Conway and was looking to set up a tipi in Watauga county and settle down. He eventually found a place along Howards Creek and then another place near Deep Gap he called Turtle Island Preserve where this foto was taken.

Eustace and I shared several backpacking trips together though indirectly as he was part of the college anthropology department and went out on Pisgah trips along Harpers Creek to run sweatlodges during get togethers organized by Dr. Harvard Ayers. I tagged along and set up my tent with the others including CampTrails Bob. Eustace also helped organize a powwow at the Scheile Museum in Gastonia where we would all go and camp, even Big Don went one time.

I remember once I was sitting on the college campus with my pack nearby when two friends of Eustace showed up on foot both wearing backpacks. They were Frank and Lori and the girl had a North Face BackMagic pack, the same as me. They wanted to get to Eustace's tipi along Howards Creek which was on the other side of a mountain called Howards Knob. I figured we could reach the place by heading up the mountain and over it to the other side, entailing some bushwacking and "confusion" for a while but we finally reached Howards Creek and found Eustace's tipi in the woods. I camped there for the night and in the morning left the group and hitched back into Boone.