Alexandra Shkolnikova, Grade 11
UWC-USA
I never noticed how tiny campus really was until I went up to the Storrie lake lookout.
Storrie Lake is about 4 miles away from the central campus area, it’s a state held park with a massive thousand-acre body of water. In ancient times, otherwise known as last year, the park was a frequent picnic spot a bike ride away; today it’s more of a legend and a distant image visible only from one spot on campus. If you hike up high enough, on a day when you feel adventurous, a 40-minute walk will bring you to a pile of massive boulders. For short-legged people like me, the hobble up he rocks is treacherous. For regular-sized folks, it’s really no big deal. Regardless of proportion, the hike is worth it. The closest thing to getting away from school is achieving those last steps to the lookout. Once on the boulders, the terrain is relatively flat, and if you move some of the tree branches out of the way, you get a good look at Storrie lake. The lake is massive but fully visible and glimmers in the setting sun. After a good look in the park’s direction, if you manage your way to the other side of the flat, you can see the centrepiece of our campus.
The Montezuma castle was built in the mid to late 1800s. Before coming into our namesake’s hands, Armand Hammer, the building, served as a military hospital, a hotel and home to Mexican Jesuits. Now it seems like the little castle on the hill plays all of these roles at once. The multifunctional building houses students and faculty, serves as a classroom and an office space, feeds us 3 meals a day (except for weekends) and is the bystander to everyday nonsense and shenanigans. It was not until recently, when I watched The Evil (1978), that I realised that most of the furniture that sits in our castle’s lobby has been the same since at least the 70s. All in all, our castle seems like the be-all and end-all, but sitting
Storrie Lake is about 4 miles away from the central campus area, it’s a state held park with a massive thousand-acre body of water. In ancient times, otherwise known as last year, the park was a frequent picnic spot a bike ride away; today it’s more of a legend and a distant image visible only from one spot on campus. If you hike up high enough, on a day when you feel adventurous, a 40-minute walk will bring you to a pile of massive boulders. For short-legged people like me, the hobble up he rocks is treacherous. For regular-sized folks, it’s really no big deal. Regardless of proportion, the hike is worth it. The closest thing to getting away from school is achieving those last steps to the lookout. Once on the boulders, the terrain is relatively flat, and if you move some of the tree branches out of the way, you get a good look at Storrie lake. The lake is massive but fully visible and glimmers in the setting sun. After a good look in the park’s direction, if you manage your way to the other side of the flat, you can see the centrepiece of our campus.
The Montezuma castle was built in the mid to late 1800s. Before coming into our namesake’s hands, Armand Hammer, the building, served as a military hospital, a hotel and home to Mexican Jesuits. Now it seems like the little castle on the hill plays all of these roles at once. The multifunctional building houses students and faculty, serves as a classroom and an office space, feeds us 3 meals a day (except for weekends) and is the bystander to everyday nonsense and shenanigans. It was not until recently, when I watched The Evil (1978), that I realised that most of the furniture that sits in our castle’s lobby has been the same since at least the 70s. All in all, our castle seems like the be-all and end-all, but sitting
Guest Writer - UWC-USA |
on the ledge of the rocks at Storrie lake lookout, you can’t help but see how quaint it is. The water tanks, furnace chimneys, and farm greenhouses that surround the building all seem comparable in size, and the flagpole sits awkwardly on the roof of one of the towers, flagless. To think that our dorms, library buildings and fields that sit below the hill, out of sight from the lookout, are even smaller, is almost comical. It tends to feel like a walk from dorm to class is a mile long; taking your books to the library is an ordeal. We are too lazy to visit our castle friends (I am so sorry), but upon inspection, everything is close-knit and compact. You know almost everyone by name. Your classes are at most 5 minutes away from each other, and if you climb up the surrounding mountains high enough, you can imagine where almost everyone is at a given time. Storrie lake lookout, if you are motivated enough to take a walk, is a great reminder of how close everyone on our campus actually is, but by the time you have reached the bottom of the hike down the hill, your mind is back to the races. The hustle and bustle of UWC-USA are always right around the corner.
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