At age 17, Eustace Conway left home to live in a teepee he had designed. He lived off the land, hunting for meat, and gathering other things to eat from the forest. But Eustace wasn't living on the western frontier, set up his camp in North Carolina. And* he did it in 1977, the year the first Star Wars movie was released. In time he created his own environmental training school, walked the Appalachian trail, and set a new world record for travelling from coast to coast on horseback. He drew followers like a magnet, but many of the people who grew close to him couldn't keep up with his hard-driving ethic, and extremely high standards. Writer Elizabeth Gilbert profiles Conway in her book "The LAst American Man" She told Minnesota Public Radio's Euan Kerr she met Conway through his brother Judson. Elizabeth Gilbert will read from "The Last American Man" at Ruminator Books in St Paul, this evening at 7:30. To hear a reading from the book, and a longer excerpt from Euan Kerr's interview please visit the books page at www-dot-minnesota-public-radio-dot-org.