Untamed: The Wildest Woman in America and the Fight for Cumberland Island (17 page)

When Carol arrived back at the compound, Buddy Candler’s truck was parked in front of her cottage. Buddy sat in the front seat, engine idling, and rolled down the window halfway.

“You lied to us,” he said.

“I’m sorry, Buddy. It wasn’t my idea.”

“Pack up and get out. You’ve got two weeks.” Then he grinned from behind the glass. “Don’t forget your chickens.”

He revved his engine and spun off, kicking up a cloud of dust and sand. Carol tasted the grit between her teeth.

Steel magnate Thomas Carnegie (left, with his brother Andrew) bought most of Cumberland in 1881.
WIKICOMMONS

Dungeness, the Carnegies’ fifty-nine-room mansion, burned down in 1959.
WILL HARLAN

John F. Kennedy Jr. married Carolyn Bessette in the one-room church across from Carol’s cabin in 1996.
WILL HARLAN

Plum Orchard is the island’s largest and most controversial Carnegie mansion.
WILL HARLAN

Jimmy Carter paddled the Chattooga River in 1970. He later protected it as a Wild and Scenic River.
DOUG WOODWARD

In the early 1970s, Carol led Atlanta activists in safeguarding the Chattahoochee River corridor from development.
ROGER BUERKI

Carol spearheaded efforts to protect half of the island as wilderness, but others have lobbied to remove the designation.
WILL HARLAN

Cumberland’s eighteen-mile seashore is one of the country’s largest and most biologically diverse.
SASHA GREENSPAN

The island’s towering dunes are home to hundreds of endangered sea turtles’ nests each summer.
SASHA GREENSPAN

Lined by live oaks, the main road was recently removed from wilderness to accommodate vehicle tours.
SASHA GREENSPAN

Thousands of feral hogs have overrun the island and destroyed endangered turtle nests.
EMILY DIZNOFF

Feral horses attract tourists, but many horses are starving and suffering.
WILL HARLAN