This is New England at its finest. Vibrant autumns. (You’ve seen the photos, right?) Sublime winters. Raucous springs, (raucous because of frog-filled vernal pools). All just a couple-hours drive from places like New York City and Boston.

We’re in a wooded hilltown of 2,000, just west of the resource-rich Connecticut River Valley of western Massachusetts. Our school is within an easy half-hour drive of the Five College area of Northampton and Amherst, home to the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and Amherst, Hampshire, Mount Holyoke and Smith Colleges. We are just two hours from Boston and three from New York. Our location makes it easy to get to all kinds of places and people, while being in a beautiful sylvan retreat. We move back and forth between these worlds regularly. We also move beyond them, via the nearby Hartford Airport, to projects around the world.

This former mill town still has the appearance of self-sufficiency and the potential for resilience, with productive farm fields and seasonal sap buckets illustrating a life lived close to the land. The annual Festival of the Hills, held the first weekend in October, celebrates with food, crafts, and games the arrival of fall — and the new class of students.

We are just a fifteen-minute drive from New England Wild Flower Society’s native plant nursery, Nasami Farm. 

Students can choose to live in Conway and be closer to the school or a nearby town or city, such as Greenfield, Northampton, Amherst, or the village of Shelburne Falls (shown below).