I was gently wilded here…Maxada Woodlands School. It’s where I boarded…or…they boarded me…some years in grade school. Not like Hogwarts, though it was hidden deeply…no one near to hear our shouting and our laughter in those Appalachian woods.
Most afternoons, for morning was for schooling, adults seemed to vanish…Topper broke an arm sledding on ice-snow downhill…through forest into a tree. Joanie discovered nitric acid vials while we scavenged treasure for our forts…drops smoked the leather of her shoes. We took glorious risks.
Oh…we acted plays on Saturdays…revised plots from myths…legends…fairy tales. Weekdays we improvised rehearsals, scavenged props…poison apples, magic dust, Medusa’s head.
That last year, Headmistress entered my dorm room…returned a one page story that I’d written…something about cats and cans of paint. She told me, “Keep writing, Bonnie. It will make you happy.”
So…maxada…and thank you for your visit…valued Reader.
Bonnie
Photo: Maxada Woodlands Boarding School
Proem... 
I find it very difficult, these days, to believe that I or anyone ever existed; that we live, love, and die into and out of a causal universe … that it all is not the set-up of some evil genius … thank you for existing, far from my conceptions, and for speaking to me, as if I matter and am free.
Well, you do and you are.
She looks a Grand old House indeed.
Yes, with plenty of places to get “lost,” yet it was the surrounding woods that lured us away.
What a wish for place it sounds B. I can just imagine it. >KB
Sigh. Yes. B