Thoreau College — Local services in Viroqua

Difficult to write anything up that would give justice to my experience. Being a fellow here in 2021 was the needed shift in my life to respark my enthusiasm and joy of learning and exploring the world. After a semester at Thoreau College, I returned to my bachelor’s program at UW-Madison with newfound focus, drive, and priorities of what I wanted not only from school but from my life. This place taught me how to live in community, connect more deeply with the natural world, and truly nurtured my internal curiosities and drives. All while being surrounded but such a generous, creative, and knowledgeable community, inside the college and throughout this incredible area. The Driftless Region is an amazing place, full of beautiful rolling hills, rivers, and wonderful people. Thank you, Thoreau College, for the path you’ve...

Thoreau College was a life-changing experience for me. During the Field School and Fall Semester Program, I got to experience so many wonders of life that I had always wanted to but never had the chance. Thoreau College was a month full of exploring and learning about those wonders. My first shooting star sighting, backpacking in the Kickapoo Valley Reserve, and canoeing in the Boundary Waters Wilderness Area are just a few examples. The campus and Viroqua are insanely beautiful places, full of rolling hills, perfect weather, blue skies, and natural springs. It's truly a magical place where you come for one thing and leave with so much more. The faculty are a wealth of knowledge and truly care about each and every student. I have met lifelong mentors and friends here and recommend Thoreau College to anyone...

I came to Thoreau College because the most common spillways out of our education system did not appeal to me. A standard life in the modern world of mechanized, automatic, depersonalized systems seemed to promise nothing but apathy and disillusionment. I wanted to live in a community where the life of my mind and the work of my body were intertwined and reciprocal.

At Thoreau College we have learned and practiced the art of tending a garden, butchering our own meat, cooking, preserving, adventuring and crafting all while pulling threads from the written word and spinning up a vibrant life of the mind in our seminar classes. Thoreau College has offered me an antidote to apathy. An experience in the handmade, heartworn, shoot-rooting, stumbling, fumbling practice of cultivating a...