It seems cliche to say that travel is a passion, so I’ll put it this way instead: I’m not sure who I would be without the opportunities I’ve had to travel, and without my role as travel editor for the Greylock Glass. And as it happens, sometimes you don’t have to travel far to come across a really extraordinary story.

The Mount, the estate of celebrated author Edith Wharton, is not even a half hour’s drive from my home, but it feels worlds apart. I’ve been going there since I first moved to the Berkshire/Hudson Valley area 20-odd years ago, and I’ve been fortuate to witness its incredible transformation. On a visit last summer, I realized that the estate, designed by Wharton herself, was something of a feminist rebel yell, even if this wasn’t a conscious expression on Wharton’s part. The rumination led to this travel story, which includes some extraordinary photographs from The Mount’s archive, as well as several of my own.