To Return

I'm sitting now at the table outside the Croft—the centuries old farmhouse that serves as the student dorm for the study abroad program at Brunnenburg I went on went on in the spring of 2009. The program is unlike any other study abroad offered at my college: instead of being immersed or semi-immersed at a university in a foreign city, students go to a castle outside the small village of Dorf Tirol in the Sudtirol (or Alto Adige) region of Italy, where the native language is German dialect. There they take classes in English with the daughter and grandson of the poet Ezra Pound, on Pound's Cantos, Medieval Saints and Heroes, and Agro-Archeology. Needless to say, it is a very unique program, with only three colleges from the US participating.

I left this region in the spring of my Junior year ready to return to the States, where Geoffrey and I would soon be engaged and living on his parent's farm in Wisconsin, building a cabin that is still unfinished. While I was at Brunnenburg I had struggled to get along with the other seven students on my course, and I had been profoundly unchallenged by the courses. I had dealt with my boredom by writing: I wrote about three hundred pages on my novel (one and a half drafts) in three months. Nonetheless, the isolation and social strain left me wounded by this time. I did not think I would return any time soon.

But when we planned our trip to Israel and decided—since we were so close, after all—that we ought to spend some time traveling in Europe together, I was excited to return. I wanted to show Geoffrey everything: the apple orchards that march up the rugged sides of the mountain, the distinct post-and-beam houses, and most of all Brunnenburg. This place, as well as being a "campus" for students from the states, is also an agricultural museum. Every wall and every available flat surface is covered with hand tools, baskets plows, wagons—an unimaginable wealth of local handiwork.

But what I found when I returned was that in the act of returning, I learned how deeply I loved this place. When I had been here before it had not been the right place for me at the time, but I had gone for my future self. And now, returning and seeing it all again, I felt a profound gratitude to that past self for that effort. I had grown into an understanding of the place I was not ready for at the time I had come to it, but could appreciate now, and which I imagine I will only grow to love more as time passes.