You Can Never Go Home: An Exception
Chris McGeady
Issue date: 2/1/06 Section: features
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Versus Magazine Online [Image Edition]
I had been thinking about it for a while, virtually since I left. It had been six months since I'd been back. Back where? What is it you're going back to? I still don't know. The night before I left I began to wonder what I was accomplishing by spending time and money to go visit this place. My brothers and sister asked me why I was going and the only answer I could come up with was, "There are a lot of people I really want to see." Was that all it meant? Not really. It was about the memories.
For ten out of the last eleven summers of my life, I was away from home for two months either attending or working at camp, so when I decided to go to boarding school I was no stranger to living away from my mother and siblings, two of whom had already lived on their own for a few years. I received a letter in December of 2001 telling me about a school that was about to open in northern Wisconsin: a boarding school. I didn't think about it again until after freshman year, when I decided that I couldn't stay in the school I was attending. We started looking around, and then I remembered the letter. We filled out all of the application materials and all I had to do was interview and take a test. The summer camp I worked at was about 20 miles south of the school. so I knew the surrounding area and what the summer weather was like. Little else ever seemed important.
The school was gorgeous: the buildings had just been completed that spring, all the furniture was pristine, and some of the planters had yet to be filled. My first visual impression of Conserve School was as I drove up the winding road from the Gatehouse through the woods, between the lakes, and up to the Lowenstein Academic Building (L.A.B.). The architecture looked like it was designed to resemble its surroundings, very earthy yet angular, painted with tones reflecting the Leave No Trace policy.